


All Possible Worlds

by dragonartist5



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Dyad (Star Wars), Force!Baby, Grief, Minor Original Character(s), Parallel Universes, Post-TRoS, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rey Needs A Hug, Romance, Sexual Content, Some Graphic Violence, Time Travel, Unplanned Pregnancy, World Between Worlds, a bit of Dark!Rey if you squint, rey is gonna bring ben solo back from the dead, slow-burn fix-it fic with plot and all the feels, these space idiots deserve a happily ever after
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:48:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 39
Words: 154,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21926974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonartist5/pseuds/dragonartist5
Summary: “I wish we met in another lifetime,” Rey says, kissing the corner of his mouth. “Maybe then we could’ve been happy.”“Maybe." Ben smiles. It’s beautiful in its rarity, but she is greedy. She wants to bear witness to more of his smiles, wants to be the reason he does. Now he only smiles in her dreams.--Haunted by Ben Solo's memory, Rey embarks on a desperate mission to locate a weapons dealer with intelligence on a rising dark force. During her travels, ghosts both past and present lead Rey to believe Ben isn’t truly gone, though his life hangs precariously in the balance.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 277
Kudos: 501





	1. The Wound

Rey’s eyes follow the condensation trickling down the surface of the drink in her hand. Her knee bounces. She thumbs absentmindedly at the cracking, purple scab on her knuckle. She tries to listen to Poe as he and Zorii swap stories, tries to smile when Finn puts a hand on her bobbing knee and gives it a reassuring squeeze, but she’s far away. Light-years away. Her fingernail pierces the surface, drawing a few drops of blood. Dropping her eyes to the wound, she raises her hand to her scabbed lips. The metallic tang blossoms on her tongue. The sting brings her back to herself, and she straightens, pinching the bridge of her nose to alleviate the pounding in her temple. 

She watches the smoldering embers of their campfire reflecting in Finn’s eyes and listens to the shouts and laughter rising from the crowd of rebels and their allies as they raise their glasses to the end of the war, to Leia’s memory, to the defeat of the First Order and the death of Kylo Ren. 

The celebration grates on her ears like teeth scraping against silverware. Rey knows she should join in the festivities. She’s expected to sit pretty and play the part—the hero, the Jedi, the legacy—but she can’t find it in her to keep up the facade. She doesn’t feel like a hero. She doesn’t want to be reminded of the faces she doesn’t see in the crowd, doesn’t want to rain on the parade with the shadows pulling at the edges of her face, a sorrow she can’t seem to keep at bay. 

The last thing she wants right now is noise. 

She has long since stopped listening to Poe. Finn’s hand is too heavy on her leg, and the lump forming in her throat makes it hard to breathe. 

“Excuse me,” she mutters, rising to her feet. She winces as her knee protests.

“Rey,” Finn starts. She puts a hand on his shoulder, stopping his words. She ignores Poe’s cocked eyebrows and BB-8’s inquisitive chirp, turning on her heel and picking her way through the greenery. 

She doesn’t stop until the shouts and hails of laughter die away, blending with the chorus of insect wings emanating from deep in the foliage. She slows, shifting her weight to relieve the throbbing in her knee. She’d split her kneecap in the battle. The med droids patched it up, but it will take time to heal. She’s got all the time in the world. 

Her gaze sweeps across the encroaching vines, the distant fires, the huts half-concealed in the jungle, and spots the thin trail where the greenery is flattened to form a footpath. It’s lit with meager, pale light from glow rods. She follows it. 

Nights fall fast on Ajan Kloss, and this one is no different. Though the sun is gone, the heat persists, and Rey wipes at the sheen of sweat on her brow, fighting for breath in the sultry air. The buzzing of insects and stirring of jungle creatures intensifies as darkness falls, and Rey closes her eyes, tuning into her other senses, extending her reach into the Force and feeling the ebb and flow of life on the jungle planet.The scent of wet soil, the babbling of a freshwater stream fed by underground springs, the whisper of moth wings and a toad’s thrumming, baritone call, provide much-needed clarity, and she focuses on flow of information, the shifting tides of energy. 

She’s glad for the chance to stretch her muscles and anchor herself in the Force’s flow, for the distance between herself and the base, from the triumphant war cries, the toasts proposed in honor of the enemy’s defeat. She’s grateful for the distance between herself and the stares, the hands reaching to touch a piece of her, the whispers in the crowd. _The Last Jedi . . . the Sith Killer . . . she defeated Palpatine . . . she killed Kylo Ren . . ._ In their eyes, she’s legendary. She’s beginning to understand Luke’s resentment of the Jedi Legacy. She wishes they’d treat her like a person. They admired her for a story already twisted on the tongues of people who did not know the whole truth. 

She’d killed Kylo Ren, but Ben Solo had risen from the ashes. She hadn’t spoken of him since her return, to Finn or anyone else. She keeps Ben’s memory hidden, locked away where it can’t be taken from her and twisted beyond recognition. Someday, she’ll set it free. She’ll secure his legacy. She owes to Han and Leia. It would be an insult to their memory to keep the truth of their son’s sacrifice to herself. It would be an insult to the man who saved her, who pulled himself out of the darkness for her. For now, though, the world isn’t ready. She isn’t ready. She needs time to glue herself back together. She needs time to heal. 

She knows what she needs to do. The best way to make sure Ben's legacy lives on is in the training of Force-sensitives from the galaxy. Restore the Jedi and the cultivate the balance between the light and the dark by fostering both. 

A firework bursts overhead, illuminating the jungle in red light. Rey staggers back. The scent of burning flesh stings her nostrils, the crackle of electricity jumping from her fingers, the hiss of a lightsaber igniting, the scream of a TIE as it spins out of orbit and explodes in a plume of flame and debris, Palpatine’s laughter and Ben’s body, so heavy in her arms. Rey’s stomach turns. She sinks to the ground, knees pressed into the earth, fingernails piercing her scalp, eyes squeezed shut against the flashbacks ricocheting through her. 

More fireworks rain colorful sparks into the night sky, and each explosion is another X-wing plummeting toward the ground, another crack of lighting, another voice rising from Palpatine’s Sith army. 

_Enough._

Rey pulls herself out of the onslaught of memory before it carries her away, trembling and gasping for air. Her teeth chatter. She stands, ignoring the pain rocketing through her knee. She brushes the dirt from her pants, heart fluttering in chest like a trapped bird, and surveys the treeline for a threat that exists only in her head. She squares her shoulders, rolls out the knots in her neck, and tries not to dwell on the dead, on the thousand voices and phantom enemies and that plague her in dreams and waking moments. 

She’s had enough bloodshed for a lifetime.

Rey solidifies her defenses, patching up the chinks in her armor and protecting herself from the post-trauma flashbacks that float so close to the surface. While she’s at it, she seals herself off from the bloodied stump where a limb should be, the damaged nerve endings and phantom sensations of the broken bond. She can feel the ragged edges of the hole in her chest like a blaster shot. It’s a temporary relief, a distraction, before the memory of what’s missing returns to her. 

When it’s done, she moves on. She presses onward, skirting the treeline. There’s rustling in the foliage. To her left, a twig snaps. She envelopes herself in the Force’s web, using it like a second pair of eyes to distinguish between friend and foe, benevolent, chameleon-like Zymod from something with a bit more teeth. The task keeps her grounded and aware as she circles the camp, watching the flickering of the rebels’ campfires from afar. 

Rey pauses outside the dimly lit alcove functioning as a sort of sanctum for their fallen general. She glances over her shoulder and enters it, treading lightly so as not to wake the ghosts. Rey pauses in the center of the room, among the gifts, mementos, and flowers left by Leia’s mourners. The air is heavy with sweetness. It permeates everything. The flowers are everywhere, exploding from bouquets, woven into nets and hanging from vines. Flowers of every color, shape, and size. Flowers with flashy patterns, tendrils, teeth. A pristine, white lily catches Rey’s attention. She traces her fingers over its delicate petals. 

The flowers are mostly foreign, brought by Leia’s familiars and admirers from every corner of the galaxy. They’re evidence of her legacy, and a lump forms in Rey’s throat as she observes Leia’s Eden. It’s still a novelty for Rey, who, until a year ago, had only seen greenery among the wares of the more affluent merchants selling herbs and tonics, or in the petals falling from the desert flowers she found once in a lunar cycle, on Jakku. 

Rey attempts to identify some of the plants. A cluster of orange, star-shaped flowers, catch her attention. She watches their wandering, furry tendrils and thinks of Jakku and the shadowed, sun-spotted, wrinkled faces of passersby as she sat on the sun-scorched viewport of a stripped A-wing at the age of eight, ten, twelve, before she gave up searching the crowds. Outside Niima, Rey sat as the sun sank to its knees, the heat emanating from the paneling of the A-wing on which she sat bleeding away. She’d search under the hoods pulled up against the wind and sand for faces she couldn’t remember, and she’d ask a question. The same question, over and over, until it became a mantra in her head. 

_Where are you?_

It’s the same question she asks now, though she doesn’t expect an answer. She tries to find Ben Solo in the Force’s web. The warmth of Luke and Leia’s presence is always within reach. She can feel them, now, nudging her mind and wrapping phantom arms around her shoulders, holding her close, with the weight of a thousand generations behind them.

Rey can sense them even though they’re gone, but she can’t sense Ben. Where his presence should be, there is nothing. She calls to him, but there is only silence. It feels like an insult, after everything. She’d seen inside his head. She’d shared his emotions, his nightmares. The bond had drawn them together, though they were enemies, and it had made her nothing if not sympathetic to the man who was supposed to be her enemy, and more like him than she was willing to admit. 

He’d opened to her like a flower in the sun. On the wreckage of the Death Star, she’d felt his restraint, knowing he could never hurt her. Felt her own restraint battling with the darkness rising in her. She felt, with certainty, that if she won the upper hand he’d have no choice but to fall on his knees and wait for the end. He’d spend the rest of his life on his knees for her, if she let him. 

Rey felt the anguish that had ripped through him when he woke and found she’d left him in the throne room, and again when she slammed the _Falcon_ ’s door in his face. She felt the tendrils of fear around his heart as he woke from nightmares invariably ending with his lightsaber through her chest and told himself he could never hurt her. The blood on his hands frightened and pained him. 

She felt the hole in him he struggled to fill, the hole left by his parents, how he tried so hard to earn Snoke’s approval, how he was never enough. She felt the pain he inflicted on himself as he threw himself into his training. His master told him the pain would only make him stronger, but this felt pitiful, unnecessary. It didn't matter, because the pain was nothing compared to the agony that ripped through him when he ignited the lightsaber that killed his father. He told himself he belonged in the dark and failed to ignore the call to the light, though he tried to snuff it out. In the dark, he hacked away his humanity, piece by bloody piece.

She saw a memory from his childhood, the glare of the sun glinting off the _Falcon_ , carrying his father away, feels the sting of abandonment, and the pain is so familiar. He’d been abandoned, thrown away, used. Alone. Just like her. 

She’d been torn up over him for so long, trying to shut him out, to excise the piece of herself attached to him, and found herself inexplicably drawn to him, again and again, despite every effort to cut the cord between them. When she’d opened her eyes and found herself in his arms, a softness to his face she’d never seen, she’d known. She’d found it, the belonging she’d sought for so long. They were a dyad in the Force. They were one soul in two bodies. And she wasn’t alone, wouldn’t ever be alone again. 

She was wrong. Right now she feels more alone than ever. She screams his name, and the blood rushing in her ears and the whistle of her breath around the lump in her throat, too big to swallow, is the only answer. Sometimes she reaches so far it’s just cold and nothingness, a span of stars like jewels scattered over dark velvet, and a little part of her wishes she could just float there, beyond all possible worlds. It would take away the pain, at least. 

A gaping wound fills the space where their bond should be. She presses two fingertips to the hollow of her collarbone, just above her sternum, where the pain is greatest. Something was ripped from her, and the hole it left is festering where her heart lies, beneath the muscle and bone and tissue. The pain is as real and tangible as any wound, and it plagues her. Rey passes a hand over her chest, using the Force to soothe it away. The pain dulls to an ache she can almost ignore.

She hadn't cried for him yet. 

Rey watches a brilliant, red tree-frog climb up the wall and recalls Luke’s tutelage. He had been much more willing to impart wisdom onto her in death than he ever had in life. 

_“I dreamt of him before I met him. When I was younger, I saw the island. I saw him. I saw Ben Solo’s fall and Kylo’s rise to power,” she’d told Luke, sitting at her work station on Ajan Kloss with one of the Jedi Texts balanced on her lap, trying to puzzle out the runes. Even Threepio’s translator couldn’t decipher them, and she spent hours trying fruitlessly to understand a language lost to time. The sketches and diagrams on some of the pages were the only things that meant something to her, and even then, they were crudely drawn. She’d ask Luke for guidance, but he only said the same thing she’d heard ten times already._

_“Don’t try so hard. Focus."_

_She let her head fall into her hands, massaging her temples, trying to ward off the beginnings of the headache._

_“I think that’s enough reading for one day,” Luke said. He leaned forward and placed a translucent hand on her shoulder. She imagined she could feel the warmth emanating from it._

_“Tell me about your dreams,”_

_“I dreamt of Kylo, even when I was a child. Those dreams always frightened me. But they weren’t all bad. Sometimes they were . . .” she searches for the right word. “Comforting.”_

_During the long nights on Jakku, as she slipped into a fitful sleep, she’d see a boy with dark eyes. Sometimes she watched from afar, sometimes she approached him, spoke to him, and he’d lift his eyes and strained to see what he could only sense. Sometimes she was in his head, seeing out of eyes that were not her own. She didn’t know if the dreams happened in the present, or if they took place a thousand years ago or a thousand years in the future. Sometimes she saw him as he was when he was young, sometimes older, and the dreams themselves made no chronological sense. Sometimes there was bloodshed and masks and burning villages, and sometimes there was a hand on her shoulder, a voice in the dark, telling her,_ “you’re not alone.” 

_She looked at Luke, dashing something treacherously wet from her cheek. Those dreams had soothed away the longing gnawing at her heart and heightened it when she woke as alone as ever._ _She remembers the countless nights she'd wake in a cold sweat with the wind battering at the sides of the fallen AT-AT on Jakku. She’d wake with his words in her mouth, his thoughts in her head, and questions too big to swallow, an ache in her chest too painful to bear at the age of nine, ten, eleven . . . Even then, they were connected more deeply than either of them could’ve realized. She’d almost forgotten those dreams, those memories. She’d buried them somewhere deep inside her. She dreamt of him less and less as she got older. Every so often, though, they’d resurface. In times of intense emotion, fear or anger, she’d get a flash of a gloved hand or a red blade, a rage rising to the surface like pressure in a bottle, threatening to burst. Emotions that weren’t her own_

_“It must be very strong, then, for you to have seen him in dreams before you crossed paths,” Luke said._

_“How do I destroy it?”_

_“You can’t. Only death can break a force bond. And even then, it’s painful. Torturous, even. When you destroy a force bond, you destroy a piece of yourself, too.”_

She tries not to think about Ben, about the piece of herself he destroyed when he sacrificed himself to save her, and thinks of nothing else. She watches the frog snatch an insect out of the air. The bug disappears down its pink throat. 

_You’re not alone._

Rey’s eyes find her lap. She gazes at the lily’s white petals. It looks fragile in her dirty hands, bloodied and caked with dirt.

She reaches for Leia in the Force’s web, asking a question she already knows the answer to. 

_What now?_


	2. The Weapon

Rey uses the Force to extract the crystals. One from Luke, one from Leia. Her fingers trace over the cool metal of the hilt. She closes her eyes, reaching into the current of energy that surrounds her, calling up an image of the inner components, the complex wiring, the power conductor, the battery, the modulation circuits. With careful movements, she disassembles the saber and the pieces fall away.

Rey lets the crystal from Luke’s saber fall into her open palm, closing her fingers around it. She traces its scarred surface with her thumb and feels a jolt of energy run through her as its memories imprint on her like fingertips on skin. She feels the soft, blurred outlines of its memories, from its creation until it’s death and rebirth. She catches flashes of it’s construction at the hands of Anakin Skywalker, feels the slaughter of hundreds of Jedi at the hands of the man who would become Darth Vader. She sees it pass from Obi-Wan Kenobi to Luke, feels the blast as it splits apart under the strain of equal, combatting forces. She catches flashes of her own, deft fingers working to repair it. She feels it pass from hand to hand, from father to son to grandson, a lineage wrapped in the cosmic force, filled with struggle and bloodshed, families built and torn apart, and hope. Hope, most of all.

Rey sets the crystal aside and does the same with Leia’s saber. Her crystal’s energy is steadier, anchored and steadfast, like its wielder. Tears cloud her vision as she thinks of Leia, and she blinks them away. 

Rey picks up the makeshift beginnings of her own lightsaber hilt, which she’d scrapped together from pieces of her staff. She scavenged most of its inner materials, harvesting metal from damaged starfighters after the battle on Exegol and the paneling on the S-foils of Luke’s old X-wing. 

Rey turns the hilt over in her hand. It’s a patchwork of materials, haphazard and jumbled, but it’s hers. It’s one of the only things she possesses that isn’t borrowed or stolen or inherited. It feels _right_ in her hands, warm and humming with untapped energy. 

Rey makes a couple adjustments, pilex driver in hand, propping her injured leg up on the workbench to alleviate some of the strain on her knee. She pushes a few, stray tools out of her workspace and sets the hilt on the table, swiping a hand over her brow. The sun is high in the sky, and the air presses on her like a wet blanket, suffocating her. A sheen of sweat coats her brow and drips into her eyes. She runs a hand through her hair in an attempt to tame the frizz, but it only worsens. She’s used to heat. Temperatures on Jakku reached upwards of scorching, but the humidity on Ajan Kloss is a different headache, entirely. 

Rey turns her attention back to the task at hand, double-checking the circuits and tightening the coils. Away from the base’s buzzing activity, with only the half-finished hilt of her saber and her trusty pilex driver to keep her company, Rey is grateful for the escape. She focuses on the movement of her fingers, and the familiarity of the task anchors her in the present, providing a much needed distraction from the stormcloud thoughts heavy on her mind. 

Absorbed in the movement of her fingers, the puzzle pieces of patchwork metal and old wires, she almost forgets about the heat. She’s running on caf and adrenaline fumes, having gotten a grand total of two hours of sleep the night before, tormented by nightmares she couldn’t remember when she woke. She fights to keep her fingers steady, relying on muscle memory as she tightens a few screws and re-wires parts of the circuitry. The rest of the world fades away; it's just her and the quick, efficient work of her fingers as she aligns the circuits with the field energizers, the conductor. 

Her thumb slips, and an exposed wire burns her skin. 

“Kriff!” Rey swears, inspecting the faint, pink burn. 

She returns her attention back to the hilt, aligning the pieces and threading the wires. Satisfied, she sets the hilt aside and retrieves the crystals. 

Rey holds the twin crystals in her hands and slips into a state of meditation, reaching into the Force’s current and letting it wash over her. She catches fragments of whispers that she doesn’t understand. Some deeply rooted instinct, call it intuition, knows they are voices older than time, the voices of all the generations of Jedi. Warmth curls around her fingertips like the touch of another’s hand, and she catches a stronger, distinct voice—for a fleeting moment she thinks it’s Ben’s—calling her name, then nothing. 

She opens her eyes, watching the crystals shift in color, warm to the touch and humming with energy. They shift from a pale blue to translucent silver to brilliant red. Her breath catches as the crimson light burns holes into her and bleeds onto her palms. She gasps, dropping the crystals, and the current of energy ebbs. Rey looks around, feeling silly, and retrieves them with trembling fingers, trying to empty her mind, banishing the tendrils of fear curling around her heart. 

Leia’s voice comes back to her, and the overwhelming warmth of her presence falls over Rey. 

_Never be afraid of who you are._

The crimson bleeds to purple, then shifts to pale blue. Finally, the crystals take on a soft, yellow light. Rey stares at the crystals in her palms. She’s never seen a yellow lightsaber. She doesn’t know if there’s a rulebook in terms of blade color, but she’s only ever seen blue and red, light and dark. In her youth and naivete, she believed in good guys and bad guys, in heroes and villains, in black and white. Now, she knows it’s never that simple.

She holds the crystals in her palms. Training her focus, she uses the force to secure the crystals on either side of the grip. Energy rushes through her in one, final wave before it ebbs away.

Rey climbs to her feet, brushing the dirt from her pants. She activates the saber. It hums to life, and the double, yellow blades ignite with a hiss, illuminating the alcove.

The familiarity, the inexplicable rightness of the weapon, teases a rare smile out of her. Rey spins the blades over her head, and the smile stretches into a grin. She falls into a basic, defensive stance, a form that feels as natural as breathing. The weapon is an extension of herself. Lunging forward, she modifies her stance to fit the length of the double blades, conjuring up an imaginary foe. She sweeps the blades in a sharp, downward cut, then parries to the left. 

Rey runs through a few more practice maneuvers until sweat drips from her brow and her knee screams in protest. She deactivates the blades, and the chorus of jungle insects replaces the hum of the weapon. She turns the hilt over in her hands, running her thumb over the switch thoughtfully. 

A long, low whistle startles Rey from her thoughts. She spins on her heel, activating the saber, and watches the yellow beams flashing in Finn’s eyes. 

Finn cocks an eyebrow. “Was it something I said?

“Sorry,” she says, deactivating the saber. She blows out a breath, rubbing a spot on her brow. 

“You okay?” Finn asks, placing a hand on her shoulder. 

She forces herself to meet his eyes, nodding. 

“How long have you been standing there?” 

“Long enough.” 

“Spying?” 

“Sort of.” He grins. He points to the saber. 

“May I?”

Rey hands him the weapon, and he thumbs the switch, igniting the blades. He swings it, testing its weight, and misjudges. A shower of sparks spurt in every direction as the blade connects with the wall behind her work station, leaving a scorching gash in the stone.

“Kriff!”

 _“D-Dangerous,”_ D-O remarks, appearing at Finn’s side, observing the weapon with wary curiosity. 

Finn deactivates the weapon. 

“Yellow, huh?” Finn asks, running his fingernail up the side of the grip, fingering the switch. 

Rey nods. 

“It’s beautiful, Rey,” Finn says. “It suits you.” 

_“Beautiful,”_ D-O echoes. 

“Thanks.” 

She thinks of the crystal bleeding red for the briefest of moments, thinks of the Palpatine blood running in her veins. She rubs at the gooseflesh crawling over her arms, suddenly cold despite the sultry air. 

“Listen, Poe’s lookin’ for you. Says there’s a couple ships that need repairs, and most of these moof-milkers don’t know how to hold a wrench, let alone fix the kind of damage we’re dealing with. You know your way around wires better than any of us. Plus, Chewie could use your help. The _Falcon_ ’s compressor is still acting up.” 

“Tell him I’ll be there in a minute, I need to clean this up.” Rey eyes the massive heap of tools and spare parts scattered across her station. 

Finn nods. “I will. Maybe we can go out for drinks later. It’ll be good to see you out and about, not holed up in this place,” he gestures to her work station, her cot, the heap of books piled a mile high on her chair. “Maybe he’ll finally get off my ass. He’s worried. You sure you’re okay?” 

“I’m fine.” It comes out a bit harsher than she intended.

Finn cocks an eyebrow, looking at her like he doesn’t believe her for a second. She tries her best to hold his gaze. 

“Rey,” he began, stepping toward her. 

“Don’t do that.” 

“What?” 

“Look at me like that. Like I’m a child. I’m not. I’m _fine.”_

“I wasn’t.” 

“You were. I can take care of myself. I don’t need you.” She doesn’t sound like herself, and there’s a coldness in her voice that she hates, but she’s not one to sugar-coat. She’s not fine, and he knows it, and she knows he knows it, and she has this awful feeling she might start crying in front of him and she has no choice but to be angry, instead. So much for Jedi stoicism. Rey bites her lip, feeling her strings unraveling, just a little bit. 

“So, you’re Poe’s lapdog, now? Tell him he can shove it.”

“He’s not wrong. You’ve been . . . distant, lately, and I just thought, if you wanted to talk . . .” 

“You thought wrong.”

“C’mon, after all we’ve been through? I _know_ you. Tell me what’s up.” 

He reaches for her hand, and she pulls it out of his grasp.

“Nothing’s up.” 

“You’re difficult, y'know?”

“You should keep your nose out of other people’s business.” 

“This is absolutely my business,” he says, loudly. “You’re my friend. I need to know you’re alright.” 

“I’m alright.” 

“You’re not.” 

“I am. What more do you want for me? You checked on me. I’m fine. You can check that off your list of shit you do for Poe ‘cause he’s got you wrapped around his little pinky finger and he knows it!” 

“Rey . . .” 

“ _Finn_.” 

“Look, the war was hard on everyone. We lost a lot of good people out there. Hell, you _died_. I don’t want you to feel like you have to bear this alone. You’re not alone. You’ve got Poe and Chewie and Rose,” his eyes soften, “and me.” 

Rey clutches her head in her hands. 

“I’m fine, Finn,” she says, voice losing its edge. She lets her hands fall to her sides. She inhales, feels the dam in her chest splintering into fine shards, like glass. “You’re right. I’m dealing with some stuff, but it’s stuff you wouldn’t understand, and—” 

“I might if you let me, Rey. Please.” He takes her hand, and this time she lets him. “Talk to me. Help me understand.”

“I’ve got work to do,” she says, dismissively. “I’ll see you later, Finn.” Rey drops his hand and turns away, waiting for him to say something. It feels like an eternity before she hears his reluctant footsteps trailing away. 

Once he’s gone, she lets the tears fall. A small sob escapes her lips. She wipes the tears from her cheeks impatiently, reaching for the pilex driver and tossing it into the toolbox. She grabs a harris wrench. 

_“Sad.”_

Rey turns. D-O tilts his head, looking up at her. 

_“Sad,”_ he repeats, wheeling toward her. He butts against her leg. Rey drops to her knees, stroking his cone head. 

_“Sad,”_ D-O sighs. 


	3. The Accident

Rey crouches in the cockpit of an X-wing, attempting to repair the wiring. She’s up to her elbows in grease, hair escaping from the knot atop her head and sticking to her face with sweat. Her legs are beginning to cramp from sitting in the same position for so long, and her knee is killing her. Wires spill out of the X-wing’s circuit board like tangled fishing wire, and she’s had a hell of a job repairing them.

She salvages what she can. It’s what she does best, but she’s been inside enough old and damaged ships and seen enough scrap metal to know when to throw in the towel. Recognizing a lost cause on Jakku, where pickings were slim and a rusted convertor could get you food for a week or nothing at all, depending on the day and Unkar Plutt’s generosity, could save you valuable time and energy, even your life. So she weeds out the circuits that are completely fried, most scorched beyond repair by Palpatine’s Force lightning, and rips them out by the handful. Left with the salvageable pieces, she sets to work.

She threads the wires together, connecting them to their respective outlets and replacing the old ones. It’s taxing, complex work, but it takes her mind off things. She’s happiest when she’s working with her hands, and it’s easy to forget about the world for a moment when it’s just her and a cockpit and a thousand spaghetti string circuits in need of repair. She makes steady progress, and each repair gives her a burst of satisfaction that temporarily soothes the bone-deep exhaustion and melancholy weighing on her. 

The base is active and buzzing. The rebels are busy with repairs and drills and preparations. The stragglers, still hungover from the celebrations, nurse mugs of caf as they pore over star charts. Their leadership, headed by Poe and a few representatives from the Core Worlds, discuss plans for the restoration of the Republic. Rey blends into the crowd, content to hole herself up in the damaged X-wing, away from the roar. Apart from the occasional, quick greeting, no one bothers her much, and she likes that just fine. She hasn’t run into Poe and thanks the stars for small mercies. 

She thinks of Finn. The worst part is, he’s right. She hasn’t been herself. She thought things would get better, but she feels like she’s drifting farther and farther away. She can’t pretend everything’s okay. Not when there’s a hole where her heart should be. Not when everything feels so far away. So she keeps to herself and fixes starfighters to avoid breaking another perfectly precious thing. 

Rey reattaches the last of the wires and climbs out of the cockpit, stretching her sore muscles. She wipes her hands on a rag and surveys the X-wing’s exterior. She discovers a bigger problem; peeling away the paneling on the underbelly of the fighter, she reveals a massive buildup of carbon scoring. She crawls under the ship on her hands and knees and works to scrape it away. When she’s satisfied, she replaces the last panel and climbs out from under the ship. 

“Rey!” A voice calls, and she doesn’t have to turn around to know it’s Poe. She meets his eyes, and he strides toward her, closing the distance between them. He sticks out his hand and pulls her up. 

“Thanks,” she mutters, warily, brushing the dirt from her pants, fully expecting some smart remark. He catches her off guard, then, when he throws his arms around her, pulling her into a tight embrace. He pulls away, searching her face. 

“Finally decided to come out of your hole, huh? Good.” He touches her shoulder “We missed you.” 

“Finn’s right. I need to keep up the pretense of functionality if I wanna look like a semi-normal human being and not some crazy space hermit. I should show my face once in a while.” She frowned. “I don’t appreciate that, by the way.” 

“What?” 

“You sent Finn to guilt me. Cheap move, even for you.” 

“C’mon, that’s ridiculous. He’s worried. We all are. You . . . you’re not acting like yourself.”

“Oh? Enlighten me,” she retorts, folding her arms across her chest. 

“You’re distant. I don’t think I’ve seen you even once since the battle without that look you get, like you’re far away. You’re not _here_ .” Poe runs a hand through his hair, laboring over his words. “You’re always looking _through_ things. It’s like . . . it’s like you never came back. It’s like you really did die, and I’m just talking to a ghost.” 

Rey steps back, at a loss for words. 

“I didn’t,” she manages, weakly. 

“Obviously, but it’s not the same.” He picks at a loose thread on his sleeve. 

“You’re not here.” He taps his temple. “You’re somewhere else.” 

“I don’t . . .” Rey begins, and trails off. 

“Forget it,” Poe snaps. 

Rey shifts her weight, feeling like her lungs are being squeezed into a tube. 

“Got anymore fighters in need of a patch up?” Rey asks, desperate to change the subject. Her voice doesn’t sound like her own. 

“Chewie needs help with the _Falcon_. You’re the only one he trusts within a mile of that junkpile.” 

“I’ll find him.” 

Poe nods. Rey stoops, reaching for her pack, and slings it over her shoulder. 

“Rey?” Poe asks, catching her wrist as she turns to leave. She meets his eyes, traces the crow’s feet pulling at the corners, the worry lines etched into his brow. Lines he’s too young for. When he speaks again, his voice is barely more than a whisper, and Rey finds she prefers it when he’s yelling.

“Come back to us, okay?” 

She nods, horrified to find her tears reflected in his eyes.

* * *

She finds Chewie by the _Falcon_ , sitting on a workbench, gnawing on the roasted thigh of some exotic jungle bird. Grease coats his muzzle. He roars happily when he sees her and leaps from the bench, pulling her into a hug that squeezes the air from her lungs. 

“Hey, Chewie,” she says, with a laugh. “It’s good to see you. Poe said the compressor’s acting up?” 

Chewie nods. He returns to the bench, and Rey sits beside him. He offers her a drumstick, and she takes it, suddenly starving. She can’t remember the last time she ate. She bites into it and sighs as grease coats her lips, dripping down her chin. She wipes her mouth on the back of her hand.

“Will you return to your family, now that the war’s over?” She asks Chewie. He nods. 

“I’d like to visit Kashyyyk, someday,” she told him. 

_“You would be welcome,”_ Chewie assured her, and she smiled. _“Where will you go?”_

“I don’t know,” she tells him. “There’s nothing left for me here. I don’t have a place in this story anymore.” The moment the words leave her lips she knows they’re true. Finn and Poe and Chewie and the rebels will always be her family, but a new chapter is unfolding. She’d given her life to save the Resistance, and now it’s time to give herself to new endeavors. It’s her destiny. 

Rey runs a hand through her hair. 

“I can’t leave Finn and Poe, but I can’t stay,” Rey says, rubbing her temples. 

_“You will know what’s right,”_ Chewie remarks. _“When the time comes, you’ll know.”_

“I want to believe that.” 

_“You already do.”_

Rey smiles. 

“It is a Jedi’s duty to pass on the teachings to new generations,” Rey says, sucking the marrow out of her bone. “I think it’s time I complete my training, so I can begin to build a new Order of Jedi.” 

It feels right. This is her path, her place. She’d usher in a new generation. She’d protect the legacy of the Jedi, the Skywalker legacy. 

“I’ll make them proud, Chewie,” she says, thinking of Luke and Leia and Han and Ben. Chewie moans, long and low, and puts a paw on her shoulder. 

“I won’t let them die in vain.” She strokes his fur. “I promise.”

She dashes a tear from her cheek,

“Let’s take a look at that damn compressor, shall we?” 

* * *

They work in comfortable silence, interrupted only by the _pinging_ of sparks against metal and Chewie’s occasional, frustrated growl. Rey’s thoughts drift to Luke and the prospect of building a new Order. The Texts hadn’t offered her much in the way of wise lessons, but she’d discovered a map of the old Jedi temples, perhaps just ruins now, crudely sketched on a piece of parchment and tucked inside the binding of one of the volumes. It isn't much, but it's a start. She’ll forge her own path. She’ll correct the mistakes of her predecessors and restore balance. 

A cold fist closes around her heart at the thought of training a new generation without Ben by her side. She’d hoped so dearly for the fulfillment of the vision she’d seen when they touched hands. She’d seen him stand by her side, she’d seen him build a new Order, a new home, with her, and now that he was gone it felt like the universe had cheated her, somehow. It had dangled something she’d wanted so badly right in front of her face, only to snatch it away. 

A burst of gas startles Rey from her thoughts and she jumps back, yelling in surprise. One of the valves burst, and fumes fill the air. 

Chewie roars, frantically. 

“I know, I’ve got it,” Rey says, reaching for a wrench. She tightens the valve, and the pipe, overheated from the influx of hot air, burns her wrist as she reaches to adjust the pump. She gasps, snatching her hand away. Chewie grunts, concernedly. 

“I’m fine,” she says. The burn is one among hundreds of other, old white scars on her hands and arms from countless encounters with live wires and rusted metal. Rey reaches for a pilex driver and pries at the valve. 

“If I can bypass the modulator, I might be able to stop this,” Rey tells Chewie, plucking two wires from a tangle of circuitry. She attempts to connect them. The moment the wires touch, a violent current of electricity surges through her. The scent of burning flesh fills her nose. The last thing she hears is Chewie’s roar of alarm before her vision dims and she blacks out. 


	4. The Confession

_“Rey?”_

_Rey opens her eyes. She’s lying on a bunk in a room she doesn’t recognize. It’s featureless, perfectly square. Sunlight filters through a small rectangular window._

_“Rey!”_

_She sits up, scanning the room for the source of the voice. Something inside her, something integral and instinctual, recognizes it. It may as well be the sound of her own thoughts inside her head, but it’s distant, like someone’s calling to her from the end of a very long tunnel. The warm, solid weight of a hand falls on her shoulder, and Ben appears by her side._

_“Ben?” she asks, breath catching in her throat as he kneels by her bedside and takes her face in his hands. Her hand slides up to grasp his as he entangles his fingers in her hair. A small, sad smile tugs at the corners of his mouth._ _She knows this is a dream, that Ben is dead, but some small part of her wants so badly to believe it’s real._

 _“Rey," he breathes, stroking_ _her cheekbone with this thumb, looking at her like he’s memorizing every detail of her face._

_“Where are you?” she asks, fighting tears._

_He says nothing, and Rey shakes her head, asking the question that's been gnawing at her heart for so long._

_"Why didn’t you let me die?”_

_"I couldn't," he says. "I wouldn't have survived it."_

_"That's selfish."_

_"Maybe."_ _He kisses the space between her eyes. She fists a hand in his hair, pulling him close._

 _"We'll see each other again," he murmurs, "I promise."_

_"I want to believe that."_

_"Rey, listen to me," he says, and a note of desperation bleeds into his voice. A tear cuts a path down his cheek. "You can't stay."_

_"Why not?"_

_“Rey, wake up."_

_“No,” she says, slipping her fingers into the spaces between his, gripping his hand like a lifeline. “Don’t leave me.”_

“Rey, wake up!” 

Rey’s eyes snap open. Poe sits at her bedside, holding a compress to her forehead. Behind him, a med droid tends to a monitor tracking her vitals. The smell of bleach and antiseptic stings her nose. She sits up, heart beating too fast in her chest, trying to gather her bearings. Ben’s voice rings in her ears. She licks her lips, tasting the salt of her tears. 

“Woah, take it easy,” Poe says, laying a hand on her shoulder. 

“What happened?” 

“You crossed some live wires. It gave you quite a shock.” 

“How long have I been out?” 

“Only a couple hours. You’ve got some nasty burns on your hands, but you’ll be fine,” Poe informs her. “I’ve seen worse.” 

“I’ve seen better,” Finn says, appearing in the doorway. He grins, though his eyes have a dark look about them she’s never seen. “How’re you feeling?’ 

“Like I got run over by a herd of Banthas,” Rey says, hoarsely. Poe snickers. 

Rey’s temples throb. She rubs at them, making another attempt to sit up, and a wave of nausea washes over her. She waits for it to pass, squeezing her eyes shut. Her limbs are leaden, and her hands, heavily bandaged, are sore and stinging. Her teeth chatter. Finn approaches her bedside and drapes a blanket over her shoulders. 

“You got lucky.” 

“Not the word I’d choose,” Rey says, with a mirthless laugh. 

“It’s true. The med droids say you should’ve died under such extreme voltage.” 

“It takes more than a little shock to kill me,” Rey says, half-jokingly. A nasty cough wracks her body, and she raises a bandaged hand to cover her mouth. Finn rubs her back. 

“Force, Rey, you’ve gotta stop giving me heart attacks.”

“I’ll try.” 

She fidgets with the bandages on her hands, tugs at the IV in her arm. She rips it out, and an alarm begins to blare. She struggles to stand.

“What’re you doing?” Poe asks. 

“Leaving.” 

“Rey, you need to rest."

“I’m fine.” 

“You just got electrocuted!"

 _“Hey, we need a med droid in here!”_ Finn calls. 

“That’s not necessary,” Rey snaps. Her stocking feet hit the floor, and her legs collapse under like they’re made of jelly. She pitches forward, and Poe catches her. He scoops her up and lifts her onto the bunk like she weighs nothing. A med droid enters the room and rushes to shut off the alarm. It approaches her bedside and struggles to reattach the IV to the plug in her arm while she wrestles out of Poe’s grip. 

“Please hold still, Miss,” it chirps, frustrated. 

Finn puts a hand on her shoulder. 

“Just rest, Rey. Save your strength.” 

Rey holds his gaze. She weighs her options, and a voice in her head, a voice that sounds suspiciously like Han’s, tells her to pick her battles. She relaxes, leaning against the pillow. The med droid checks her monitors and leaves, looking flustered. Poe presses the compress against her forehead, again, and she lets him, shivering under the blanket, suddenly dizzy. 

“What the hell was that?” Finn asks. 

“This is stupid. I’m fine.” 

“You’ve still got an irregular heartbeat from the shock, they want to monitor your vitals. You really think gallivanting off to do more stupid shit is the best idea?"

“Where’s Chewie?” Rey asks, ignoring his words. 

“Back on the _Falcon_. Another valve burst. He’s fixing it. I’ll let him know you’re awake.” 

Rey nods. 

“Thanks.” 

Poe leaves, and Finn seats himself on the stool by Rey’s bedside.

“You gave us a scare, y’know.” 

“That bad, huh?” 

“Your heart stopped, Rey.” 

Rey swallows. Finn rubs a hand over the stubble on his chin, gaze fixed on the floor. When he meets her eyes, they’re filled with tears. She shakes her head, feeling a lump in her throat, thinking this was all so _stupid_. A lifetime around crashed ships and scraps of metal and a couple of crossed wires had nearly killed her. 

“You were dead for eight minutes. It looked like we'd lost you, but . . . I dunno, something . . . something pulled you back.” 

Rey looks at him. She reaches for his hand, and he takes it. 

“I’m sorry.” 

“You should be. You’re not being _careful_. You’ve gotta stop pulling shit like this.” 

Rey blinks, stung. 

“Oh, I’m sorry I’m not a perfectly well-behaved damsel. I’m sorry I’d rather hit myself over the head with a very large rock than take a back seat and let you do all the heavy lifting!” Rey rolls her eyes. 

“You know what I mean.”

“No, actually, I don’t.”

“I’m not saying you should take a back seat. You’re the best fighter we have, and a damn good technician, not counting this. I’m not an idiot, anyone can see it. I’m just saying you need to stop going about things with no regard for your own safety!" He's shouting, and Rey flinches. "You aren’t thinking. You aren’t _here_ ,” Finn says, in an eerie echo of Poe’s words. "You need to take care of yourself." 

“I’m sorry,” she says. 

Finn folds his arms across his chest and frowns. 

“I mean it, Finn. I’m sorry. For everything. For yelling at you, for . . . _Force_ , Finn, for everything. I just . . . there are things I can’t tell you, things you wouldn’t understand. Things _I_ don’t understand, really, and I . . .” 

“It’s about Ren, isn’t it?” 

She blinks. 

“How—” 

“A feeling,” he says. 

Rey wrestles with the lump in her throat, trying to get words out. Finn covers her bandaged hand with his own. 

“You can talk to me, Rey. Whatever it is . . .” 

She nods. It's time to stop hiding. It's time to stop running from herself, from the truth. So she opens herself, just a little, like a knife opens a body and lets it contents spill out. 

“When I . . . when I was little, I had dreams,” she says slowly, choosing her words. “Dreams I didn’t understand. At least, not then. I dreamt of an ocean. An ocean that stretched as far as I could see. I saw it as if I was floating above it, and I saw all this blue, never ending. In the middle of this ocean, there was an island. I dreamt about that island almost every night for twelve years, Finn.” Rey picks at the bandages. “I didn’t just dream of the island, I dreamt of Ben Solo. I saw him as he was when he was a boy, and I saw him become Kylo Ren.”

“How’s that possible?” 

“Shut up and listen," she snaps. Finn raises his hands, palms out, in mock-surrender. 

“Sorry.” 

“On Starkiller Base, he knew I’d seen the map, and when he pushed into my mind to retrieve it, I pushed back. Something came awake, inside me. Something that had always been a part of me. And I . . . I looked inside Kylo’s head, and I saw myself. He was alone. He’d been abandoned. Used. I was afraid, at first, but the more I saw the more I realized I couldn’t be afraid of someone who was so afraid of himself, and some part of me, the good part of me, saw something worth saving. I saw a man, alone and afraid, where everyone else just wanted to see a monster. Ben Solo wasn’t dead. He was buried somewhere, deep down,” Rey wipes a tear from her cheek, fighting to keep her voice steady as everything comes pouring out, like some awful secret, and all the while she watches stormclouds gather in Finn’s eyes, worry lines deepening in his face. 

“I’m not crazy,” she says, quickly. 

“I didn’t say you were,” Finn says, patting her hand gently so as not to disturb the shiny, tender skin peeking out from beneath the bandage where the wires had burned her. 

“When I was on Ahch-To, we spoke. The Force connected us, somehow, tethered us to each other, not as enemies but as equals. When he offered me his hand, I wanted to take it, but I knew I couldn’t. I knew I couldn’t have what I wanted. I wanted Ben Solo, and he was still trying to kill that part of himself, so I left. I abandoned him. On the Death Star, I tried to kill him, and I very nearly succeeded.” 

Rey draws a shaky breath. 

“But I couldn't. Only he could do that, and he did. For me. When I went to fight Palpatine, he helped me. I killed Palpatine, and the act should’ve killed me, too, but Ben saved me. He killed himself to save me, and when he died . . .” Rey pauses, wiping her eyes. “When he died, a piece of me died with him.” 

“Rey . . .” 

“We’re a dyad in the Force. One soul, two bodies. There hasn’t been one for thousands of years. You can’t break something like that. When you do, the other half of the soul, the one that lives in me, it’s damaged. I can feel it . . . in my heart. It pains me all the time. There’s something missing, and I . . .” She fights to get the words out. “I can’t feel him. He’s gone.” 

“He was a tyrant, Rey. A murderer . . .”

“Kylo was a murderer. Ben saved my life.”

“Talking about him like he’s two different people doesn’t change the fact that he slaughtered entire villages of innocent people. I _saw_ it. I'd bet my right arm he's done a whole lot worse.”

“He was Palpatine’s puppet all his life. Palpatine abused and manipulated him, even in his childhood. His _childhood_ , Finn.” 

“That doesn’t change—”

“Doesn’t it, _FN-2187?_ ” Rey snaps. “Remind me, how old you were when you were taken from your parents and raised to kill for them? You of all people should know that it’s possible for a good person to be stuck on the wrong side. It’s possible for people to change, to seek penance. If we can’t see that, how are we any different from them?” 

Finn falls silent.

“There’s something else, Finn,” Rey says, quickly. “I found out who my parents were. My father and mother . . . they left me on Jakku to protect me from Palpatine. He wanted to kill me, so they hid me from him. They died trying to save me.”

“Why would Palpatine want to kill you?” Finn asks. 

Rey looks at him, tears spilling from her lashes.

“Because I’m his granddaughter.” 

* * *

The med droids insist on keeping her overnight. They’ll release her in the morning. Rey lies in the med bay alone, contemplating ripping the IV out of her arm and mind-tricking her way out of this damned place. She fiddles with the bandages on her hands and stares at an indiscernible point in the distance. Finn, Poe, and Chewie retired for the night, leaving her alone with her thoughts and the gentle whirring of machines as they keep time with her pulse, monitoring her vitals and regulating the IV drip. 

Everything feels heavy. It saps all her energy to move her limbs, so she lies as still as possible and counts each spike on the monitor as it measures the slow, steady beating of her heart, irrefutable proof that’s she’s alive, that her organs are doing what they should to keep her that way. She doesn’t feel alive. She just feels numb. The loss of him is a terrible weight, keeping her pinned down, limbs trapped, suffocating. She can’t escape it. 

Lying there, in the dark, Ben’s voice comes back to her. In her mind, she tries to reconstruct the sensation of his hand on her cheek, his scent, like ashes and blood but something sweeter, too, but her wildest fantasies cannot replace him. It was the first time since the battle, since his death, she’d gotten any kind of relief from the agony of the broken bond. He’d been so close, solid and real and there, and _all hers_ , and the missing piece had popped back into place. It felt less like a dream and more like a visitation, like he’d reached out to her from some higher plane. 

When she woke, the pain returned, multiplied tenfold by the cruel a reminder of _what could have been._

_You can’t stay,_ he’d told her. How she wishes she could. It would be easier that way, to let go and leave it all behind. She wants to let go.

Rey closes her eyes, too numb to cry, trying not to dwell too hard on the fact that the only real belonging she’d ever known had been reduced to something that could’ve been. Eventually, she slips into a fitful slumber filled with dreams of long, twisting corridors and tangled vines, chasing something that remains just out of reach.


	5. The Map

Rey stares at the wavering line on the monitor. 

“How long?” 

“Two weeks,” the medic says, folding his hands.

“You’re sure?” 

“Positive.” 

“And the electrocution?” Rey asks, and her voice sounds like it’s detached from her body, like someone else is speaking, very far away. 

“The shock does not appear to have harmed it.” 

Rey nods.

"Thank you," she manages, though her mouth is drier than the Goazon. The medic dips his chin. 

"Am I free to go?" 

"Yes, I'll file for your release." 

She stands and leaves without another word. She exits the med bay in a daze, letting her feet carry her off the footpath and into the jungle. She doesn’t stop until she’s put at least a mile between her and the base. The even ground begins to slope downward, and she follows the stream cutting through the foliage. It whispers secrets too ancient for her to understand. When she tires, she settles herself on the rotting trunk of a fallen tree and lets her head fall into her hands. 

A child. It’s impossible. She’d never . . . 

She thinks of Ben, the warmth of his hand pressed over her abdomen as his life force flowed through her. She’d heard his voice, calling her back when she wanted so badly to stay, floating in that vast expanse of stars. Those stars were so much bigger than everything, and the pain was gone, and she was ready to let go. She’d accepted her death. Welcomed it, even. She’d done her job. 

But some part of her had wanted to stay. Ben saved her life, but he'd only acted as a conduit. Floating there, sprawled on the night's studded wings, she'd made a choice. Somehow, he’d convinced her to stay. She'd chosen to stay. She'd stood on that great precipice with the voices of a thousand Jedi echoing in her ears, opening their arms to her, lighting her way, and she'd chosen to return to Ben's arms because she thought it was the beginning of something, not the end.

She hadn't realized she'd made another choice, too, even if some part of her had known the truth for a while now. 

She thinks of Leia, the stories she’d told Rey about the Skywalkers. Anakin Skywalker’s immaculate conception. Shmi Skywalker, a desert slave, birthing the Chosen One. 

History, repeating itself, on and on and on. 

Rey stumbles, clutching the dark, rubbery trunk of a tree to steady herself. The sky splits open, the world crashes down. Rey takes a breath, then another, trying to gather her bearings. 

There's a child. No denying it, now. 

Ben’s child. 

Young mothers on Jakku didn’t last long. Extra mouths were death sentences, and Rey had seen the extent to which young women went to make sure they didn’t bring a child into the world they could not care for. Clinical termination was expensive. They died from methods of termination that were less . . . clean. If they carried to term, they left their babies to die or sold them into slavery to keep themselves fed for another week, another month, or, if they were lucky, to buy transportation off the planet widely regarded as the armpit of the galaxy.

Rey took pains to ensure it never happened to her. The sex trade was second only to the scrap trade on Jakku, and Rey suspects Unkar Plutt would’ve sold her to a brothel long ago if he’d run out of use for her. She kept herself busy, worked her fingers raw scrubbing old parts taken from corpses of star destroyers so that she wouldn’t have to sell her body. She learned how to fight, and she watched from afar, as young mothers, eyes clouded with despair, the bones in their faces all too prominent, clutched infants to their breasts and wept. Their children nuzzled at their chests with open, squalling mouths, searching for nourishment to ease their empty, aching stomachs. She watched infants starve or freeze to death, abandoned by their mothers, left to the elements. She grieved for them. 

She reminds herself that she’s no longer starving. She’s safe, and her child, _their_ child, is safe, away from Jakku. It wouldn’t be alone. Not while she has breath in her lungs. 

Rey sits on the soil, hands splayed against her belly, trying to accept the child that Ben, in his last act, had given her. She’s a mother. She carries the last of the Skywalker bloodline in her womb. He’d given her a family. 

_She's not alone._

This is the Force’s will. This is the next chapter in her story. Her and Ben's shared destiny, twisted and turned upside down, yes, but it would play out as long as the stars aligned. It's a child of the Force as much as it's hers and Ben’s, and it will usher in a new generation, a new Skywalker. 

She sees it with so much clarity, more than the Force had ever granted her before. She can see the whole hand of cards, the stepping stones, the path laid before her. A surge of protectiveness rises inside her, hot and heavy. She will protect this child, her star, like she couldn’t protect her parents. Like she couldn’t protect Ben. The fear splintering in her chest gives way to resolve, like the gnarled, white skin stretching over a scar, and she clings to it. It burns in her stomach and curls through her fingers like electricity. Nothing will hurt it, this last piece of Ben, this gift, as long as she has breath in her lungs. 

She climbs to her feet, ignoring the throb in her knee and the agony in her chest. The ache feels less, somehow. Maybe it’s the knowledge of what she carries. A piece of him. A lifeline, a reminder of what he’d done for her, what he meant to her. Will their baby look like him? Will it have his eyes, his smile?

She wipes a tear from her cheek, gazing into the canopy and the light filtering through the trees. The sun’s setting, and she’s far from the base, far enough she can’t hear the roar of engines and ships come and go. It’s replaced by the chuckling of the nearby spring and the chatter of exotic, colorful birds that make their nests high in the trees. 

She sets off in the direction of the base, walking briskly, feeling stronger, stronger than she’s ever felt in her life. She’s hyper-aware of her body and its vitality. She uses the Force to push low-hanging branches and thick vines out of her path. She moves a bit more gingerly, careful not to disturb the tiny life inside her. She feels silly. Her child is a cluster of cells, probably no bigger than the tiniest seed. 

Darkness is falling by the time she reaches the base, and the soft, blue light from glow rods filter through the trees. She steps out of the jungle, keen to slip off to her quarters unnoticed, to be alone with her thoughts and maybe, just maybe, finally get some sleep. Exhaustion weighs on her bones. She can’t remember the last time she’d gotten a full night’s worth. She kept herself busy, kept herself awake, because she knew when she finally drifted off she’d see him. She’d see his smile fade. She’d sit there, helpless, as he died in her arms. She’s so exhausted she doubts she’ll dream at all, and she prays for one night’s respite from the torment, from the wound in her chest that keeps her up, tossing and turning in quiet, private agony. Right now her cot seems like the best thing in the world, even though it’s hard and lumpy and full of spiders, and she wants nothing more than to introduce her head to a pillow, but Finn sniffs her out, like he always does, foiling her plans. 

“Poe told me you ran off. I’ve been looking for you,” Finn says. 

“I went for a walk,” Rey says dismissively. 

“How’re you feeling?” He searches her face. The concern in his eyes makes her ache, just a little. When she told him about her relation to Palpatine, he didn’t freak out like she’d been afraid he would. 

_“It’s like you said. We can’t help where we come from."_

He’d talked her through her grief, despite his hatred of the former Supreme Leader. He wasn't ready to forgive Kylo, but he hadn't dismissed her feelings for Ben Solo. The waves still crash over her head, one after the other, but his company makes it a little easier to keep her head above water. He’s her truest friend and trusted confidant. He’d always have her back, and she hates herself for doubting him, for keeping so many secrets from him for so long. 

“Tired,” Rey said, fidgeting with a bandage. “The doctor gave me a salve for the burns.” She rubs her temple. “I’ll live.” 

“You wanna get a drink? Poe’s treat,” he offers. Rey shakes her head. 

“I should rest.” _Still making excuses,_ she thinks bitterly. Still running away. 

“Okay.” He nods. “See you later, then?” 

Rey nods. She plants a kiss on his cheek and ducks into the system of caves and tunnels running through the base. It's a short walk to her quarters. She fishes a dehydrated ration pack out of her bag and sits on her cot, nibbling on it. 

In the privacy of her quarters, she lifts her tunic and trails her fingertips over her waistline. 

“Hello, little one,” she whispers, allowing herself a smile. A real smile, the first one in weeks. For one, fleeting moment she feels the soft, tender weight of a hand press over her belly, and she freezes, gooseflesh exploding over her arms. Tentatively, she places her hand over the place where Ben’s hand should be, and feels, inexplicably, the ghost of a fingertips trailing her cheek. The sensations fade, leaving a hollowness in its wake. 

“Ben?” she whispers. There’s no answer. She pinches the bridge of her nose, relieving some of the pressure in her temple. She rubs her arms, shivering. 

_I’m going mad._

She stands, retrieving one of the Jedi Texts from her desk. Leaning against the wall and balancing the book on her knees, she slips her fingers into the binding and retrieves the worn, hand-drawn map of the old Jedi temples. She unfolds it carefully, poring over the drawings. 

_“Ossus. Dantooine. Tython. Illum. Lothal . . .”_ she says aloud. This is the next step. Like stepping stones, the old Jedi temples lie scattered across the galaxy, embedded with a Jedi history she must uncover if she wants to carry on its legacy. 

There’s notes scrawled in the empty spaces on the map, not in the runic language of the original Texts but in Basic. It’s probably an addition added long after the Texts were written, tucked in the binding like a student’s cheat sheet. When she found it, she thought Luke might’ve drawn it, though the beautiful, calligraphic hand doesn’t match his rough scribbles. She traces the careful, looping letters with her fingertips, and a jolt runs through her. 

A memory transfers from the page to her fingertips, playing in her mind like a roll of film. She sees a teenage boy, maybe fifteen, long-legged and gangling. His hair, the color of ink, is shorter than it was when she’d known him, but she’d recognize those dark eyes anywhere. It’s Ben. Her breath hitches. She clutches the book so tightly the blood recedes from her fingers. He sits cross-legged at the end of a bed, in a small hut lit by a fire. His nose almost brushes the page as he scrawls notes in the margin, chewing his lip. His hand stills, abruptly. He stares across the room with eyes, a moment ago so bright and focused as he studied the map, clouded with fear. It’s rooted so deeply in him it seems to strain his whole being, pulling at the corners of his face and deepening the lines in his brow. He swallows hard. Rey follows the line of his gaze across the hut, but there’s nothing there. 

“Go away,” he says, in a tight voice. A shiver runs through her. She keeps her eyes trained on the far side of the hut, trying to see what he sees, but there’s just a bookcase, a desk cluttered with crumpled papers, a potted plant. She looks at Ben, but he’s far away, fighting a phantoms in the darkness. He’s afraid, so afraid it makes her ache. She wants to touch him, wants to help him, but she’s just a visitor, and this is just a memory. She cannot save him. 

The walls of the hut begin to fade, and Rey sucks in a breath of air, returning to her body. Her cheeks are wet with tears. She clutches the map to her chest and closes her eyes, and all she sees is the slim, frightened boy all alone with the voices in his head. The image is burned into the backs of her eyelids, in her skin, in her heart. It’s smoldering, and the smoke scalds her throat and burns her eyes. The tears come thick and fast, and a sob builds in her throat. She winds up on her hands and knees, pressing her forehead into the floor as her body shakes with sobs. She hadn’t let herself cry, _really_ cry for him, and it all comes pouring out of her now. All it took was one, carefully aimed blow to the dam she’d put up in a poor attempt to protect herself from the inevitable. She tells herself this is necessary. She has to well and truly break before she can begin to heal. It still hurts like hell. 

She cries for the boy she’d seen and she cries for the man she couldn’t save and she cries for their child, a child without a father, and she cries for herself, too. She cries for the orphan on Jakku and the thousands of marks scratched into _Hellhound Two._ She cries because she is still lonely, still lost, and the wound in her chest torments her like eternal punishment, a reminder of _what could’ve been._

She cries until there’s nothing left. When it’s over, she’s scoured and rubbed raw. She clutches the map and traces Ben’s graceful, looping letters, feeling both farther away and closer to him than she’d ever been. He’d given her one last gift. The map is the key to her journey. He keeps surprising her, throwing her lifelines.

 _"Thank you,"_ she thinks, with a smile. Of course, there's no answering nudge against the walls of her mind. 

She slips into slumber’s still waters with the map crumpled in her fist and his name on her lips. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a few notes from the author:
> 
> Thanks for all your feedback on the story so far! I (still) feel like a personal injustice has been done to me, no thanks to Jar Jar Abrams, and this story is as much as healing process for me as it is something I hope brings you a bit of comfort 
> 
> Soft Boy Ben Solo owning a calligraphy set and practicing calligraphy in his down time MAKES ME FEEL THINGS 
> 
> I deliberated long and hard over whether I wanted to make Force!Baby Solo a thing and I could not resist. I know it's easy to fall into the hole of making Rey Shmi Skywalker 2.0 who lives alone in the desert and raises a child by herself and I promise this is NOT the fate that awaits our badass baby girl . . . Daddy Solo WILL return and he'll watch his children grow up and their collective genetic superiority will be too much for this world to handle.


	6. The Capital

Rey secures the _Falcon_ ’s hatches and false panels, giving everything a once-over and checking the newly repaired compressor before she joins Poe and Chewie in the cockpit. Poe’s running a system check, and Chewie’s priming the hyperdrive. A light, female voice supplies coordinates for Hanna City, the Republic’s former capital. 

A handful of rebels, Finn, Rose and Chewie included, are relocating to the capital to oversee the restoration the Republic. A council with thirty-two members, representatives from the Resistance and the Core Worlds, will lay down the foundation for the Republic until a proper election is held and reformations are made. Poe and Finn are serving as Leia’s successors. 

Rey accompanies them. She’s no diplomat, but she owes it to Leia. She hasn’t told them her plan to break with the Resistance; she cannot stay if she plans to protect the legacy of the Jedi. She’s dreading it—the look in Finn’s eyes, the disappointment on Poe’s face when she abandons the closest thing to a family she’s had. So, she’s going to Hanna City. To delay the inevitable. To see Leia’s vision come to fruition. The spark hadn’t died with her, and she hadn’t died in vain. 

Rey joins Finn in the crew’s quarters. He makes room for her on the bench and she sits, leaning on her elbows and fiddling with one of the knobs on the Dejarik table. The _Falcon_ rumbles to life. Finn wraps an arm around her shoulders as the ship rises in the air. 

“Hold tight back there,” Poe calls, “we’re makin’ the jump!” 

BB-8 beeps inquisitively, cables shooting out, securing him to the walls. 

The _Falcon_ jolts, and Finn’s arm keeps Rey secure in her seat as G-forces overtake the ship for a moment, until they’re speeding through space at lightspeed.

Finn eyes the electrical injury on her hands. She removed the bandages this morning, revealing shiny, purple burns crawling in web-like patterns over her fingertips, the tops of her hands. They’re beginning to scab over, and flakes of dead skin fall off in large swaths. 

“Does it hurt?” 

She looks at Finn.

“No so much, anymore.” She makes a face, scratching at one of the scabs with fingernails already caked with dried blood. “It’s just itchy.”

Finn challenges her to a game of Dejarik, then accuses her of being a sore loser as she laments over her fallen hologram. 

“You’re cheating!” 

“I’m not!”

“There’s no way in hell. A month ago, you couldn’t beat me if I let you!” 

“I’ve been getting private lessons from Chewie.” 

“Bantha shit! He’s the biggest cheater I know.” 

A muffled growl of indignation emits from the cockpit. 

“Sorry, Chewie,” Rey says, quickly. “It’s nothing personal, it’s just a fact.” 

“Maybe if you came along on some of those recon missions instead of lifting rocks, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” 

Rey folds her arms. 

“Oh, are we gonna go down that road?” she asks, eyes flashing. “Pathetic.”

“Your words, not mine.” 

She punches his shoulder. 

“Wanna go for a rematch? Maybe I’ll let you win this time.” 

“Sod off,” Rey says, rolling her eyes. She leaves the Dejarik table, making her way into the cockpit. 

“How’s our fuel reserves?” she asks. 

“We’re golden. Enough to make it to Chandrila and back without breakin’ a sweat.”

“And the compressor?” 

“Whatever you guys did, I think it did the trick.” 

“Well, you can’t be sure with this hunk of junk.” 

She rests a hand on the back of Chewie’s chair, rubbing the worn leather, and her heart climbs into her throat. The cockpit dissolves into a memory. A small boy, about two or three, sits in his father’s lap in the cockpit, reaching toward the array of blinking lights and switches on the console with a chubby, toddler hand. He jabs a blinking, orange button with a sharp finger, and Han shifts the toddler to his other knee. 

“Don’t touch that,” he warns, and Ben, all ears and shock of curly, black hair, gazes up at his father and smiles. 

“Rey, you alright?” Han asks, putting a hand on her shoulder. 

Rey blinks, and it’s Poe, not Han, squeezing her shoulder, waving a hand an inch from her nose. 

“Hey,” he says, “you okay?” 

“I’m fine,” she grinds out. “Excuse me.” 

She ducks out of the cockpit, ignoring BB-8’s beep of inquiry. She pushes past Finn and shuts herself in one of the private quarters. 

She collapses on a bunk, holding her head in her hands, trying to ward off the voices even as they scream in her ears, too many to make sense of. This ship is full of memories. Ben spent a large part of his childhood years on this ship, and he’s everywhere. In the cockpit, where he first learned to pilot a ship, in the false panels he hid in when he played hide-and-seek with Chewie. Ben’s presence permeates the space like a flesh memory, and Rey’s a conduit, reading the memories like a trespasser on a gravesite. She feels like she’s was intruding on something very private and very painful. 

She sees Ben, at the age of five, standing tip-toe on a marble balcony dotted with plants and windchimes, watching the _Falcon_ rise in the sky until it became a speck, then nothing at all, and Rey’s heart somersaults. Hadn’t she done the same damn thing, from her perch on the viewport of that stripped A-wing outside of Niima? Hadn’t she counted the days, same as him? 

His mother father fought. Al the time. Mostly about him in voices edging on whispers. Whenever they fought, his father left for a week, a month, sometimes longer. Ben hated this ship. He hated watching it leave, hated wondering if it had carried Han away for the last time. It’s why he wanted so badly to obliterate the _Falcon_ and everything it stood for. It reminded him of Han, of the father who abandoned him, again and again. It reminded him of the irredeemable act he’d committed. It reminded him of his darkness, and the home he couldn’t return to. 

Rey reaches up, running her hands over the smooth, metal paneling, a little grimy and worn with age, catching a flash of her hand scratching a mark, one among thousands, into the wall of the AT-AT, saw a small girl of eight or nine wearing Captain Dosmit Raeh’s helmet, too big, squinting out of its overlarge, clouded visor to survey the air traffic. Ships came and went, and she scanned the skies for a ship she recognized, even though the memory of her parent’s ship had long since faded. She lets her hand drop to her side, feeling impossibly young and impossibly small.

A growl startles Rey from her thoughts, and she jumps. Chewie appears in the doorway. 

“Hey, Chewie,” she says, softly. Chewie settles on the bunk and wraps her in a tight embrace, grumbling. 

“I’m fine,” she insists. She looks at him. 

“Do you see them, too?” she asks, quietly. “The ghosts?” 

Chewie huffs, softly. 

“I see them all the time.” Rey draws a shaky breath, rubbing at the gooseflesh on her arms. “I think . . . I-I think I’m going crazy.” 

_“I see them too,"_ he admits _._

“How can I go on, Chewie?” Rey asks. “I’ve lost so many, already.”

 _“You must be strong, for your pup,”_ Chewie growls. 

Rey blinks, flabbergasted. 

“You know?” 

Chewie nods. 

_“The scent is heavy on you.”_

“Oh,” Rey manages, staring at her hands. 

_“The dead will wait, little one,”_ Chewie says. _“Right now, you must think of your family.”_

He sighs. They sit in silence, and Rey’s thoughts circle the toddler sitting on Han’s lap, giggling and batting at the bright, flashing lights on the console with the carefree, unrestrained fascination and joy, untainted by darkness. She chases the memory around her mind like a smell she remembered but couldn’t place. She thinks of her child, of the future that still holds an echo of a promise, and feels a considerable weight lifting from her chest. 

* * *

It’s twilight on Chandrila. Hanna City is nestled in a valley surrounded by rolling hills. It’s an architectural masterpiece, with buildings of elegant marble that towered into the sky and clandestine statues and gardens cut apart by winding paths and decorated with exotic flowers. The senate building stood in the center of the city, and it’s front doors opened to the city circle, which housed a vibrant, bustling marketplace lit by lanterns. 

Rey follows Finn and Poe through the marketplace, eyes tracing the storefronts and tables lined with wares. She breaks from the group to inspect a textile stand lined with hand-woven cloths and tapestries. Rey runs her fingers over a beautiful, cobalt tapestry woven with gold flowers. She smiles at the merchant—a hunchbacked, old woman with a cybernetic eye. Rey hears the whir and click of gears as the eye’s pupil fixes on her. 

“It’s beautiful,” Rey says. A lumpy white scar divides her face. She manages a lopsided smile, saying something in a language Rey doesn’t understand. 

“I beg your pardon?” 

“You’re Rey,” the woman says, in a thick accent Rey cannot place, “Jedi warrior.” 

Rey’s smile falters. 

“How d’you know my name?” 

“My dear, everyone knows your name,” the woman says, with a laugh. She opens a small, wooden box and pulls out a silver ring. It’s gemstone is jade, a color that reminds her of the ocean’s deep green, of coral and mirrors and the shadowy forests on Takodana. 

“Because of you, peace is possible.” She places the ring in Rey’s palm. “Take it.” 

“I can’t accept this,” Rey says, eyes trained on the woman’s half-smile. The woman clasps Rey’s hand, folding her fingers over the ring. 

“You must. You’ve given me a gift much more valuable than a gemstone,” she says. “You’ve given me hope.” 

She offers Rey her hand, and Rey clasps it. 

“I don’t know your name,” Rey says. 

“Tari Shik,” the woman says.

“Rey!” Finn calls. “C’mon, let’s go!” 

“Coming!” Rey says. She turns to Tari Shik, running the pad of her thumb over the gemstone. “Thank you. I won’t forget your kindness.” 

“Who was that?” Poe asks, when she rejoins them. 

“I don’t know,” Rey says, distractedly. She glances up the street at the bustling crowd, the thousands of people from a thousand worlds speaking a thousand languages. A smile pulls at her lips. 

She’d always wanted to explore the galaxy. A lifetime of Jakku molded her heart to yearn for bigger things. She’d traveled with the Resistance, but they kept a low profile, traveling from base to base on meager resources, living off bland rations and facilities without running water. She wasn’t complaining, she wasn’t used to such luxuries, let alone a full stomach, but not everyone wanted to be a hermit like Master Luke. She won’t deny herself simple pleasures. 

Hanna City’s atmosphere is seductive in its vitality, and she drifts through the streets, collecting sights and sounds, tucking the memory into the archives of her mind. A pleasant breeze rifles through the carefully manicured gardens, and the scent of flowers mingles with the aroma of a bakery on the corner. Two shopkeepers argue, two lovers walk hand in hand. A mother soothes a crying toddler. A chorus of laughter and the clang of silverware drifts through the open window of a restaurant. The smell of cigarrra smoke drifts from a balcony covered in ivy. Somewhere, music is playing. 

She trails after Finn and Poe as they make it through the marketplace. When they reach the capital, a representative waits for them on the front steps, dressed in elegant robes of deep purple. He introduces himself as Roane Dunari, a former member of the Galactic Senate and a Corsucantian ambassador. He clasps their hands and leads them through the sprawling senate building. 

“You’ve each got a compartment to yourself, equipped with a bed and bath, and a full wardrobe,” Dunari says, leading them up a double-sided staircase. 

“General Dameron, you’re on the left. Finn, Rey, on the right.” 

“Thank you,” Rey says. 

“You’re invited to join us for dinner,” he tells Rey. “Tonight, the council will gather to decide the future for the New Galactic Republic. It’s a daunting task, I don’t pretend it isn’t, but I believe we have no business denying ourselves the pleasure of good food and drink while we do what our forefathers could not: ensure lasting peace in the galaxy.” 

“That’s a tall order,” Poe remarks, “All I’ve ever known is war.” 

“Difficult, yes,” he says, “not impossible.” 

Roane Dunari bows and sweeps off, leaving the three of them standing in the pristine hallway, and Rey feels especially grimy and war-torn as she takes in the marble and white, the crystal chandelier, the gold trim. 

Rey bids Poe and Finn a farewell and slips into her compartment. It’s elegance matches the rest of the building. The walls are white, the floor a dark, russet tile flecked with gold. There’s a balcony, and Rey opens the door and steps into the night. 

The breeze ruffles the flyaways falling from her buns. Luminaries lit with artificial flame light the balcony. Potted plants dotted with yellow flowers hang from fixtures in the wall. Rey fingers a slim, low-hanging stem. She leans against the rail, peering at garden below. The babble of a fountain joins the din of conversation rising from the courtyard.

It’s beautiful.

Leia and Han lived here. It’s the birthplace of Ben Solo. Pieces of their lives are scattered in this city, buried artifacts. They came here to rebuild their lives after Endor, to raise a child, to find some semblance of normalcy. 

Leia told her stories from Ben’s childhood. She smiled, sometimes, while she recounted her tales, though such an occurrence was few and far between. Mostly, sorrow hung around her, almost tangible, and Rey wished she could pull such a heavy weight from her shoulders, erase the storm clouds in her eyes. 

_“I was naive,” Leia said. Rey sat across from her, sipping caf from a steaming mug. “I thought everything would go back to the way it was. I joined the Senate, because making decisions and bossing people around is what I do best. I wanted to oversee the birth of the new world I’d so sorely won. It kept me busy, but I couldn’t escape who I was. I hated my father for what he was, what he became.” Leia reached across the table, clasping Rey’s hand. “I hated that he was a part of me.” She sighed, staring at her clasped hands, and when again she met Rey’s gaze she looked a thousand years old._

_“After Endor, Luke trained me. It wasn’t long before I realized how much Vader I had in me. I was so angry. I felt things too deeply. I would’ve gone straight to the dark.”_

_“That’s not true,” Rey said. Leia smiled, wryly._

_“I appreciate your faith in me, however misguided,” she said. “You’ve met my son. Where do you think he gets it?”_

_Leia laughed, though her eyes held a quiet, distant kind of sadness._

_“I knew I had too much anger, too much hatred, so I locked that piece of me away. Luke ran off to be a Jedi. I married Han. I tried to move on, but I couldn’t. I carried what had happened to Alderaan in my heart and I ached for my family, for the home I’d lost. When I sensed darkness rising in my son, all I could see was Vader and the ashes of my homeworld. I was blinded. Fear rooted itself in my heart, and it never left. I pray you never know what it feels like to fear your own child. I did, and I couldn’t keep it from him. I tried so hard to protect him, and I failed him.”_

_In the end, she’d saved him._

_“You didn’t fail him, Leia,” Rey heard herself say, squeezing Leia’s hand. “No one could’ve made his choice for him. He’s his own worst enemy.”_

_Leia frowned._

_“I just want him back.”_

Rey gazes over the rooftops of urban, groomed houses with walls crawling with ivy, resting a hand on her belly, feeling closer to Leia than ever. Emerging from the rubble of war with the future on her shoulders and a child at her hip and the shadows of parents she never knew, her path entwined in the Force, the Skywalker legacy . . .

Rey sighs, slipping her hand under her shirt and tracing soft, circular patterns over her belly with her fingertips, vowing to do what Leia couldn’t. She won’t let this child slip through her fingers. She won’t let her own darkness destroy this sacred, precious thing. She hates the part of her that’s Palpatine, but her love is stronger, just like Leia’s love was stronger, in the end. 

Comforted, Rey leaves the balcony. She tosses the pack containing her meager belongings onto the bed and makes her way to the refresher. She strips her clothes, letting them fall unceremoniously to the floor. She catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror and flinches, trying to recognize the person staring back at her. The woman in the mirror looks a thousand years old. A quilt of fading, red and purple bruises blots the left side of her temple, from hairline to cheek. She’s dirty and scarred, with shadowed eyes and thin cheeks. She looks hard, filled with ash and heat. 

Rey turns away from the mirror and runs the bath, an unthinkable luxury on Jakku She would’ve killed for this luxury. Keeping clean on Jakku wasn’t an easy feat. She’d set up a rudimentary vaportator and dampened a cloth, scrubbing the grime from her fingers and the soles of her feet. It took her months to break the habit. Even on the few Resistance bases with the luxury of running water, she’d use a rag and water from the sink. Watching the water level rise in the pristine, white bathtub, so much waste, stirs up anxieties rooted in her basest instincts. 

This is a special occasion, Rey tells herself as she climbs into the bath and stinks into the hot water, submerged up to the shoulders. This is the first, proper cleansing she’s had since the battle, and she spends a long time with a bar of soap and a pumice stone, painstakingly scrubbing the remnants of the battle from her skin, ridding her body of the stench and stain of ashes and blood. She avoids the wounds she sustained, the gash in her calf, the fresh surgical scar on her knee where the med droids tried their best to repair her kneecap, the cracked and flaking scabs on her hands. 

There’s old scars, too. Scars she’d sustained on Jakku, nestled among the numerous blemishes and sun-spots left by the harsh sun. A lumpy, white scar on her elbow she’d gotten when she was twelve, after she fell a hundred feet from the top of the fallen star destroyer she’d scaled, searching for the best scraps. The scar one of Snoke’s Praetorian Guards had given her, before she slit his throat. The quilt of bruises draped across her body, ranging from yellow and green to the deepest black. 

She leans against the tub’s wall, reaching up and undoing her buns, one by one, letting her chestnut locks fall around her face. She uses the shower head to wash it, rinsing the dirt and grease from her tresses, and experiments with different shampoos and oils. She chooses pleasant, lavender and citrus scents and massages it into her scalp. Thoroughly cleansed, she climbs out of the bath and pulls the drain, watching the sudsy water, discolored with the dirt and blood she’d scrubbed from her skin, disappear down the black eye of the drain. 

She wraps a towel herself, rubbing the unfamiliar, soft material and marveling at its absorbency as she dries off and brushes out her hair. She dresses in her undergarments and pulls on a fluffy, white bathrobe. She peruses the wardrobe, soft cotton and velvet flowing over her fingers like water. It’s elegant, fine material. She’s admiring an exquisite, white silk dress when there’s a sharp rap on the door and Finn steps in.

“What’s the dress code?” she asks, fiddling with sequins on a bright, silver jumpsuit. “Formal attire or business casual?” 

Finn points to the ridiculous, bejeweled jumpsuit in her hands. 

“Anything but that.” 

She rolls her eyes, stuffing it into the closet. She folds her arms, staring at the rows and rows of elegant gowns and expensive fabrics, quite possibly some of the nicest, most expensive things she’s ever laid a hand on. They look so out of place in her grubby, calloused hands. 

“What am I doing here?” 

“I was thinkin’ the same thing,” he says, pulling a long, sea-foam gown from the closet and holding it up for inspection. 

“I’m not socially adept,” she groans, “I’m not politically correct or refined or . . . or . . . ostentatious enough to wear _this_ ridiculous thing,” Rey shakes her head, brandishing an outrageous shirt with frill cuffs. 

“Just be you,” Finn says, sitting on the edge of her bed. She joins him. “You don’t owe them anything.”

She takes his hand in both of hers, tracing his knuckles. A quiet moment passes between them. 

“Hey, did I ever tell you what I wanted to tell you when I thought we were all gonna die in the sinking fields on Paasana?” Finn asks, quietly. 

“No.” Rey looks at him, searching his face. 

“Well, erhm . . .” Finn averts his gaze, clearing his throat.

“Is this the part where you confess your undying love for me?” she tries, grinning.

Finn laughs.

“What? No, of course not. It’s just . . .” he pauses, taking a breath. “I don’t know how it all works, but I get . . . feelings, fleeting moments where I . . . know something I shouldn’t, or I get a sense of the energy in the room, or, I dunno . . .” He takes a breath. _“IthinkI’mForcesensitive.”_

“What?” 

Finn rubs a spot over his eye. 

“Um, I think I’m Force sensitive.” 

“Finn, that’s incredible!” She jumps up, throwing her arms around him, and his arms encircle her as he pulls her into a tight hug.

“I can train you! I mean, I don’t think I’m ready to take on a padawan, but I can show you a few, basic things. Force, Finn!” she says, stepping back. “Why didn’t you tell me?” 

“I wasn’t sure. I felt it during my first battle. Something overcame the decade of programming and training drilled into me. I didn’t shoot. I knew I had to leave, and I knew how I was gonna get out, and everything just kind of fell into place . . . I don’t know any other way to explain it.” 

Rey nods.

“So, do I get a cool lightsaber now, or—” 

The door slides open, and Finn trails off. Poe steps in, dressed in a nice shirt and pants, hair slicked back. 

“Bloody hell,” Rey breathes. It’s the first time she’s seen him without engine grease up to the elbows. 

Poe grins.

“Dinner’s at eight. You coming?” 


	7. The Dinner

She’s seated at an oblong table, clothed in a satin dress the color of darkest wine. She fidgets in her seat, fingering the collar. It reveals more skin than she’d like. She feels exposed. The dress hugs her thighs and sticks to her with sweat, and it’s difficult to move in, let alone fight in.

Poe convinced her to leave her lightsaber in her quarters, and the absence of its familiar weight at her hip makes her uneasy. She’s developed an attachment to the weapon and being without it in an unfamiliar place with the threat of attack, however slim, always needling in the back of her mind, agitates her.

Rey rubs her elbows. 

She feels out of place here, where everyone speaks with poise and diplomacy and everyone knows what to do with the array of silverware arranged on either side of her plate. She’d only just learned to use a fork last year. 

The only thing worthwhile is the food. Servers set down platter after platter of strange delicacies, Rey grabs everything she can reach, piling it onto her plate. There’s an array of dishes from across the Core Worlds and Rey eats herself into a coma. When her third plate is cleared away, she pushes back from the table and knots her hands over her stomach, gaze sliding over the faces at the table. 

Poe discusses voting policies with a pretty young senator Bespin. She catches Finn’s eye across the table and suppresses a laugh. He looks visibly uncomfortable, tugging at his collar and drumming an irregular beat on the edge of the table with his fingers. She’s grateful at least someone else shares her out-of-placeness at this fancy table with all these fancy people—ambassadors and chancellors and war heroes 

They all want to shake her hand. Everyone seems to know her name. Everyone wants a piece of the last Jedi. 

She manages to escape a painfully boring conversation with a pair of ambassadors from Mon Calamari and tries to catch Finn’s eye, but he’s absorbed in solemn conversation with Commander D’Acy about the demobilization of the stormtrooper program.

Before dessert, Roane Dunari taps the edge of his fork against his wine glass and directs their attention to a holoscreen on the far wall. A collection of footage plays onscreen, and Rey watches with rapt attention as the holovid reveals the unrest in the galaxy in the aftermath of the war. In some of the major cities and most of the poorer, Mid and Outer Rim territories, the last of the First Order’s forces are tightening their hold on the few territories they still control in a final, ditch effort. Everywhere, men, women and children rebel. Stormtroopers lay down their weapons, fighting breaks out in the streets. Rey watches in horror as a pair of First Order officers rip a small girl from her mother’s arms and put a blaster bolt through the woman’s head. Rey’s drops her eyes to her lap, feeling sick. 

She’s seen enough death and destruction for several lifetimes but something in that little girl’s eyes, her tear stained cheeks, shakes Rey the core. Rey fists her fingers in the burgundy fabric of her dress and sucks in air through her nose, feeling dizzy. The atmosphere loses its festivity. The dress is less like something beautiful and elegant and more like a superfluous extravagance. It makes her feel paper thin. While she sits here, eating colorful delicacies off of decorative platters and sipping drinks from crystal glasses, children are being ripped from their families, blood is being spilled, fire rains in the streets. Stormtroopers slaughter one another and vigilantes mount the heads of First Order captains on spikes. 

After the holovid is over, Roane Dunari and two other members of the Senate announce what actions will be taken to restore order to the unrest. Members of the New Republic are promoting recruitment programs and officers are stationed in some of the major cities to put down the last of the First Order’s forces. After his speech, a team of servers descend on the table with platters laden with desserts. 

Rey stares at the pastry on her plate, aggressively unhungry and in desperate need of fresh air. The lights overhead are suddenly too bright, and her head is spinning despite her avoidance of all the colorful, alcoholic beverages served at the bar. She pushes back from the table and rises from her seat. She lets her feet carry her toward the door and down a flight of stairs, until she’s wandering the corridors with no destination in mind. She winds up in a small, private refresher on the second floor. She bolts the door and sits on the covered toilet seat, burying her head in her hands. Every time she closes her eyes, the little girl’s tearstained face swims into focus, mouth open in a silent, anguished scream. 

Rey digs her fingernails into the delicate skin of her forearm, trying to ground herself in the present, as flashbacks butt against the walls of her mind. She focuses on her breathing, trying to draw out her quick, shallow gasps into longer, steadier breaths. Blaster fire ricochets off the insides of her skull, the scent of singed flesh stings her nostrils, and the sensation of lightning jumping from her fingertips stops her heart in its tracks. She clenches her fists, drawing them to her chest. With hooded eyes, she slowly and carefully builds up her barriers, conjuring up an image of an ocean and waves and swelling tides, of a flower in the desert and an endless expanse of stars. Eventually, her breaths slow. She counts them. 

In. Out. 

One. 

In. Out. 

Two. 

She unravels herself slowly and stands, going to the sink and splashing water onto her face. She draws a shaky breath, staring at her reflection in the mirror. Her eyes are haunted, red with unshed tears. The fingernail marks on her arms are oozing blood.

She slips out of the ‘fresher and wanders the halls in a daze. She climbs the staircases to the top floor and opens an unmarked door that leads her onto the roof of the senate building. There’s a courtyard with a sofa and a firepit glowing with artificial flames, rows and rows of garden boxes hosting bushes blooming with pink roses. 

Rey approaches the railing, trailing her finger along the metal. She leans over the edge, looking at the city lights sprawled out, thousands of glittering jewels. 

“You’re missing out,” a voice says, behind her, and Rey turns on her heel. Finn stands a pace behind her, holding a platter of desserts and a bottle of wine. “These chocolate-covered strawberries are killer.” He joins her by the railing and offers her the platter, and Rey plucks a small pastry from the array. She smiles. 

“You okay?” Finn asks, softly. 

Rey nods. “Yeah, I just needed some air.” 

Finn’s eyes trail over the cityscape. 

“It’s beautiful.” 

“How did you find me up here?” 

“Oh, you know,” he says, with a grin. “I just had a feeling.” 

Rey laughs. 

“That was torture,” Finn says, gesturing in the direction of the party. Rey makes a face. 

“I can’t stand small talk.”

“Me neither. People keep asking me where I’m from. How do you casually tell someone you’re an ex-Stormtrooper?” 

Rey laughs. 

“What are they gonna say? You helped save the galaxy. Nothing’s gonna change that. You don’t owe them anything,” Rey says, echoing his words. “You think you’ve got it bad? I have to tell people I’m from Jakku. _Jakku!”_

“You’re right, you’ve got it _so_ much worse. Wow. Really puts things in perspective, thanks.” Finn says, rolling his eyes. 

Rey pinches him. “Piss off.” 

“Ow!” Finn whines, rubbing his arm. It’s different for you. Everyone thinks you’re a hero.” 

“I’m not a hero.” 

“Yeah, you are.” 

“I don’t want to be.” 

Finn laughs.

“Is something funny?” 

“No, it’s just . . . that’s exactly the kind of thing you’d expect to hear from a Jedi.”

“Bantha shit.” 

“It’s true.” 

“They want a legend. I’m just . . . me.” 

“You’re too modest,” Finn says. He sits on the sofa by the fire and Rey joins him. He picks up the bottle of wine. “Wine? It’s Corellian. Fancy stuff.” 

Rey declines. She worries her lip, thinking of the pregnancy.

“Suit yourself.” He pops the cork and takes a swig straight from the bottle. “I snuck it off the dessert table, some Rodian ambassador saw me take it, gave me the dirtiest look,” Finn says, with a laugh. 

“How long d’you think we have ‘till Poe notices we snuck off?” 

“I dunno. He's still telling his Gungan wedding story.” 

Rey rolls her eyes. 

“An hour, then. At least.” She falls silent and rubs her bare arms, staring at the city lights.

Finn’s smile fades. 

“What’s going on?” Finn asks. Rey looks at him.

“What?” 

"Tell me what you're thinking," he says, shifting in his seat. 

Rey forces a smile. She stands, returning to the railing. She nibbles on a piece of chocolate coating from the fruit platter. 

“A year ago, if someone told me I’d be standing on the rooftop of the Senate building with an ex-stormtrooper, wearing a fancy gown and sipping Corellian wine, I would’ve laughed in their faces,” she says, slowly. “Sometimes I feel like everything that’s happened, ever since I found BB-8, is happening to someone else.” 

“I know what you mean,” Finn says. 

“And sometimes I get so caught up in everything, in this fight, in the Jedi Order, in the rebellion . . .” she shakes her head, “sometimes I don’t even recognize the person I was before.” 

She looks at the city lights, at the jewels inlaid in the fabric of her sleeves, which are long and fall well past her waist, at the Corellian wine and the glittering fire. At some point she’d crossed a line; she’d stopped sitting outside of the outpost at sunset waiting for her family. She waited for them, of course, but in a quiet, private, distant way. She’d stopped dreaming and searching and wishing.

She clung to those dreams like lifelines for so long, but as she got older and the marks on her wall hit quadruple digits, something hardened into scar tissue. Some small part of her, the part of her still had hope, that still wore Dosmit Raeh’s helmet and collected desert flowers and looked toward the sky every time a ship roared overhead, was slowly dying. She watched the old women, skin wrinkled with age and sun exposure, scrub the rust off scrap metal with a dead look in their eyes and wondered if she’d meet the same fate. Teedos would strip her makeshift home of what little belongings she had. Her body would be picked apart by scavenging birds and rot in the heat. Her bones would rest in a pauper’s grave, bleached by the sun and turned to dust. 

Rey _doesn’t_ recognize the girl from the desert. She supposes she’s still buried somewhere deep down and wonders if it’s worse, somehow, that even here, a thousand parsecs away from Jakku, she’s still alone, still longing for someone who’s never coming back. 

She shivers, and Finn stands, draping his jacket over her shoulders. 

“Thanks,” she says, turning toward the fire. She watches the flames dance in Finn’s eyes. 

“I don’t think that’s going to change,” Finn says, solemnly. “Feeling like it’s all some big mistake. I mean, I think we’ll all move on, of course, and we’ll think about it less, but . . .”

He shakes his head. 

“It’s never gonna go back to the way it was. And one day when we’re old and gray we’ll look back and we’ll be thinkin’ the same damn thing. Why? Why us? Why did I choose to lay down my weapon when I could’ve killed those villagers at Tuanal, when I could’ve lived out a long and dreary life working in sanitation? Why did you choose to help BB-8 instead of accepting the sixty portions he was worth?” 

“Why?” Rey echoes. “Because of that little girl on the holovid, the one who lost her mother . . .” She turns to look at him. “People need us. People are counting on us, Finn,” Rey says. “We need to give them hope. We need to show them that peace is possible.” 

Finn nods, rubbing his chin. A silence falls between them. 

“I’ve asked to lead a recruitment program for ex-stormtroopers,” he tells her, after awhile. Rey’s eyes widen. 

“What?” 

“It’s rehabilitation, mostly. We’ve gotta get through all those years brainwashing and programming. They’ll start with a clean slate. It’s a second chance, y’know?” 

“Finn . . . that’s . . . that’s really wonderful,” Rey says, tears welling in her eyes. She embraces him. “That’s amazing.” 

“It’s a good opportunity. I think a lot of them will lay down their weapons, if given the chance,” he smiles, looking more confident than she’d ever seen him. “It’s what I’m supposed to do, y’know? I can feel it.” 

Rey nods. 

“I know.” 

“It’s based on Coruscant, though. I’ll be living there long-term for a while.” He frowns. “Poe’s staying in Corellia, and Jannah’s coming with me, and if you wanted to . . ."

Rey shakes her head. 

“I can’t.” 

Finn's brow lifts. 

“I’m going to build a new order of Jedi. I’m the only one who can protect the legacy. I can’t let it die,” Rey tells him. “I should’ve told you before, I just . . . I didn’t want you to think I was abandoning you, but now you’ve got such a good opportunity, Finn, it’s all falling into place,” she says, taking his hand. “This is our destiny.” 

He’s silent, for a while. 

“Say something,” she pleads. 

“I’ve never been a big believer in destiny, you know,” he says, “but here we are.” 

“Here we are,” Rey echoes. Finn takes another sip of wine. 

“Where will you go?” 

“Dantooine. It’s the site of an old Jedi Temple. It was destroyed, but I think there’s something waiting for me there. Maybe it’s an artifact or a ghost or maybe . . . maybe it’s nothing, I just have this—”

“—feeling,” Finn interjects. 

“Yeah,” she says, “a feeling.” 

They’re silent for a long time. 

“You have Force visions,” Finn says, phrasing it like its a question. 

Rey nods. 

“Sometimes, why?” 

“I dunno. Just curious,” Finn says. “Can you control what you see?”

“Sometimes they’re dreams, but they aren't ordinary dreams. You can feel the difference, they're . . . I dunno, _real_. Sometimes the Force shows me things it wants me to see. It’s not always a clear picture, it’s a feeling or a sensation or a voice.

"The Force is conscious, at least in the way you and I understand it. It has a will, it makes choices. It’s like a game-maker,” she says, “and we’re just pawns, trying to keep the balance."

She rubs her temple.

“Jedi have strengths and weaknesses. Some of those powers grant its wielder the ability to see things you wouldn’t ordinarily see. I’m gifted with psychometry, which is, in the simplest terms, touch memory. If I touch an object, I can see events associated with that object that are significant or emotional.” Rey chews her lip, thoughtfully. “So the short answer is yes.” 

“When stormtroopers are taken, they erase the memories of our previous life. It’s part of our programming. It leaves a clean slate for all the propaganda they wire into us. I can’t remember how old I was when they took me. I’m guessing I was six or seven, which means I should be able to remember my parents. If I’m . . . if I’m Force sensitive, isn’t there a way I can call those memories back, somehow?”

“Maybe.” Rey frowns. “I’m not sure. I couldn’t remember my parents, at first, but Ben . . .” Rey falters, “Ben pushed me, he helped me uncover that part of myself. It was buried, deep down. Partly because I was so young, partly because I was denying myself the truth. If you meditated on it, if you searched your memories, maybe . . . it’s possible.” She sighs. “Sometimes I wonder if those memories would've been better left alone.”

Finn nods, staring into the flames. 

“I can’t remember what they look like,” he says, softly, 

“It used to drive me crazy. I heard their voices in my head. I saw these people with no faces, blurred in my memory. I looked for them everywhere,” Rey said. She laughed, mirthlessly. “I used to sit outside the outpost and watch people pass, and I’d look for my parents because I _knew_ , I _believed_ that I’d recognize them when I saw them. I was so certain they’d come back.”

Rey fights the hot, angry tears clogging her throat and stinging her eyes. “They never did, but I can remember them now. Properly. What they looked like . . . my mother . . . she was young.” Rey smiled, sadly. “She looked like me.” 

The floodgates are open. It’s comes back to her slowly, in moments when her mind is quiet, or something jogs a memory to the surface of her consciousness. Piece by piece, the puzzle comes together. She remembers her father stooping down to help her tie her shoes. She remembers the way her father cupped her small hand in both his large ones, the way he lifted her up so she could stand on his feet as he walked around the kitchen, holding her elbows to steady her. She remembers her mother planting a kiss and a bacta patch to her skinned knee when she’d crashed her toy speeder. Her mother had a beautiful singing voice and sang often, strange little lullabies and snatches of old tunes that echo in Rey’s mind, even now. 

“They’re gone, now. Nothing but piles of bones in the Jakku desert.” 

A tear slips down her cheek and she wipes it away impatiently. 

Finn wraps an arm around her shoulders. A heavy silence falls over them, and they try to relieve it by trading jokes and bits of conversation until Finn attempts to add some levity by impersonating a particularly nasally old woman, the Corellian ambassador, chasing away her sorrow and Rey laughs at the absurdity of it. At the absurdity of everything that’s happened, and the stupid gown and the wine. It’s the kind that’s contagious, and before long, Finn joins in. As soon as they stop to catch their breath one starts in again and they set each other off, and by the time they manage to speak without breaking down into fits of giggles Rey’s sides are aching and her cheeks are sore from smiling. It’s the first time she’s laughed, _really laughed_ , in such a long while. It mends the splinters of glass in her chest, just a bit. 

Eventually, the hour grows late. Finn makes considerable progress with the wine, considering Rey isn’t helping him, and when he starts slurring his words she decides it’s time to turn in. 

She helps Finn down the stairs and into his compartment, bidding him goodnight.

Within the walls of her room, Rey pulls the pins out of her hair, letting it cascade down her shoulders in loose ringlets. She unzips the dress and lets it fall to the floor in a heap. The cool, night breeze hits her bare skin and she shivers, rubbing her arms. Her toes skim the cold, tile floor as she approaches the bed and climbs beneath the blankets wearing nothing but a nightshirt and underwear. In the space between breaths, she falls asleep.


	8. The Dream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Sexual Content

_She wakes to the shift of the mattress as a second, larger weight settles on its edge. She opens her eyes, and Ben’s sitting on the edge of the bed, watching her with a strange, faraway look. She sits up, eyes locking on his face. His features soften. Translucent, silver moonlight falls in squares across the tiled floor and falls across his frame, wrapping his silhouette in a halo. She sits up, slowly, carefully, like she’s afraid she’ll scare him away. Her fingers whisper over the sheets as she reaches for Ben’s hand and takes it, and then she’s tugging him into bed with her and his body obeys as if no force in heaven and hell could keep him from joining her in the ocean of sheets that had previously drowned her. He keeps her afloat._

_Rey shifts so she’s walled against him and there’s no space between them, and his arms encircle her, almost instinctively. He shares her pillow, and they’re so close their noses are brushing, and his hand comes up, cupping her cheek. Rey’s gaze sweeps him, taking in every inch she can reach. She wants to take her time, because this may be the only time they have left. He is no more urgent. He slips a hand under her shirt and she inhales sharply as the thousands of contact points light up like a nebula of stars bursting into existence where his hand moves from her shoulder blades to the small of her back to outer thigh, tracing small, circular patterns._

_She's spent the last eight months getting used to people, getting used to touch and intimacy. She spent so much of her life alone, sometimes touch is too much, too invasive, too constricting. With him, it's the opposite. His touch is nourishment after months of starvation. It's familiar. It's home._

_She simultaneously enjoys and resents how easily he can scramble her wiring, how he can overpower her senses. She all but short-circuits when he touches her. He stirs something inside her she cannot name. Something a little like hunger. Something a little like pain._

_Tentatively, she touches the place on his cheek where she’d cut his face to the bone. There is no longer a scar, but it doesn’t change what she’d done, and she whispers a thousand silent apologies as she trails her finger from brow to jawline. Her lips follow her fingertips as she presses a burning line down his cheek. She tastes the salt of his tears, tastes him, and her grief, the ache in her chest, mingles with the ache between her thighs, and she wants to lose herself in him, wants the lines between them to blur. Her teeth scrape the soft skin of his earlobe. She kisses his neck, sucking at the skin until it bruises. His jaw works, and she can feel him trembling. A moan builds in the back of his throat, and it gives her the confidence she’s been searching for._

_She climbs onto his lap, knees braced on either side of him, and begins to move in slow imitation of the thing they’re both chasing, exploring the way it feels. She’s never done this, but it doesn’t stop her. It feels right, like everything else about him. The bond is open, and the traffic of thoughts and sensations jumps between them easily, filling up the empty spaces. It’s a balm to her wounds. Finally, finally, they’re together. No interruptions, no wars to wage, just them._

_She’s slow, deliberate, watching his face. She draws out each, slow movement and bursts of light explode across her vision as she finds an angle that’s particularly pleasurable to both of them. He groans, and his hands spasm at her hips. She knows he wants to dominate, to take control, but she won’t let him. She slides her hands up his wrists and laces her fingers in his. A whine pulls at his lips. His eyelids flutter._

I can take whatever I want, _he’d told her, the day he pushed into her mind and she pushed back, and yet he let her go countless times, let her slip away like water through his fingers. It’s the chase. He likes the challenge, and she likes that he wants her, that he needs her. She can have begging on his knees in an instant._

_She places his hands on her stomach, and fingers span the spot where their baby grows. His thumb trails her waistline._

_“Rey,” he begins, but she seals her lips to his, stopping his words, and his voice dies in his throat._

_“Don’t talk,” she says. Finally_ , _she’s thinking clearly. She wants to focus on their bodies, on the electricity coursing through her and the flush crawling up her neck, the heat between her thighs and the ache low in her belly. He obeys. His fingers seize her nightshirt, pulling it over her head. Her underwear comes next. She disentangles it from around her feet and lets it fall to the floor, impatient to be rid of it. She sitting back on her thighs to let him see her, all of her, and she should be nervous or self-conscious, but she’s not. She’s not afraid of her body, and she’s not afraid of him. The way his gaze roves over her hungrily, like she’s the first water after a drought, it gives her strength. In that moment, she's invincible._

_She expects him to say something, but he doesn’t. Instead, he sits up and seals his mouth to hers, bruising her lips. She catches his bottom lip in her teeth, biting down, and sound, somewhere between a growl and a moan, rumbles in his throat. The sound unzips her skin, sends tremors racing up her spine. She braces him against her thighs and sinks against his length, tugging at the hem of his shirt. She arches her back. The kiss breaks off as he pulls his shirt over his head. Rey slides off his lap and falls onto the bed. She lays back, one hand traveling up his thigh, the other closing around his wrist. She guides his hand between her legs, holding his gaze._

_“Touch me.”_

_He nods, leaning to kiss her, and his lips are gentle, light as moth’s wings against her own, as he slips his fingers into her folds, already slick. She closes her eyes, giving in. The bond is alive and throbbing. She can feel him use it to guide him, showing him where to apply pressure and where to relieve it, how fast and where._

_It doesn’t take long._

_Starbursts explode in the dark. When she reaches her climax, her legs to turn to jelly as the stars align, three, sharp bursts of light. She gasps. He pulls her onto his chest, pressing his lips to her crown._

_“You’re so beautiful,” he mumbles, against her hair. She waits for the tremors to leave her body. He kisses her tears. His hand rests over her belly._

_“You’re going to be a father,” she tells him._

_“I know.”_

_She covers his hand with her own, drawing patterns over his knuckles._

_“Stay with me,” she pleads._

_He kisses her neck, working his way down until he’s pressing light, chaste kisses to her stomach. She runs her fingers through his thick, dark locks._

_“Ben," she says, more to feel the shape of it on her tongue than anything. He cups her cheek in his palm. She lifts her chin to catch his lips in her teeth._

_His thoughts bleed through the bond. He kisses her, and a thousand uncertainties fade as the Force thrums through them like electrical currents, burning holes into her skin, widening the cracks. He obliterates her senses, overpowers everything, and it’s hard to tell where she ends and he begins. His scent, his voice, his pulse. Her thighs spasm, again, and she attempts to still them, attempts to quiet the pounding of her heart. She’s sure he can hear it. He kisses her, arms encircling her, holding her close, and his adoration, his love, is a real and tangible thing. He defies every ugly thing buried in her heart, shrapnel from a war fought over a lifetime._

Alone. Unwanted. Unworthy. Unloved. 

Together. Wanted. Worthy. 

_“I love you,” he says, breaking the kiss._

_“I know.”_

_Rey worries her lip. "_ _You left me.”_

_“I didn’t want to.”_

_“Why did you?”_

_“I couldn’t stay,” he tells her, eyes brimming with tears._

_“Why didn’t you let me die on Exegol?” Her voice is a ghost of a whisper._

_“I couldn’t,” he says. “Maybe it’s selfishness. Maybe it’s weakness.” Ben shakes his head. “It doesn’t feel like weakness.”_

_“I wish we met in another lifetime,” Rey says, quietly. She kisses the corner of his mouth. “Maybe then we could’ve been happy.”_

_“Maybe,” Ben says. A lock of hair falls into his eyes and Rey brushes it away._

_“I don’t want this. I can’t do this. Not alone. Not without you.”_

_“You can. You must, for your son.”_

_“Son?” She gasps, fisting a hand in his hair. “It’s a boy?” Ben smiles, pressing his forehead against her own._

_“I didn’t know,” she mumbles, stroking her belly._

_“You deserve a life,” Ben murmurs, “I didn’t have a chance at one.”_

_“You did. With me. With our child.” Rey takes his face in her hands. “You still have a chance. Here, now.” She kisses him, softly. “Be with me.”_

Rey gasps, sitting up. She clenches fistfuls of the sheets, trying to gather her bearings as she wakes from a dream straight into a nightmare. Her pillow is soaked with tears. She’s slick between her thighs. 

“Ben?” she asks. There’s no one there. Every particle of her being screams out for him, curses him, begs for him. He’d been so real . . . she refuses to believe he’d been a figment of her subconscious. She wants him to fill her up again, wants him to scramble her wiring. There’s an ache, an emptiness, within her, and she shoves her hand in her underwear and attempts to relieve it. She finishes herself off with mechanical efficiency and falls back on the pillows as sparks explode behind her eyes, biting off a gasp.

She rises from the bed once the tremors abate. 

She retrieves her bag and rifles through its contents before she withdraws Ben's sweater. She’d recovered it from Exegol before she escaped. She sits at the edge of her bed and fingers the hole in the cloth where she plunged his lightsaber through fabric, through flesh and bone. The fabric is charred around the edges of the hole and it crumbles under her fingers. She presses her face into the fabric, staining it with tears, and inhales. It smelled like him, once, but even his scent is fading. She pulls the sweater over her head. It’s much too big for her. The sleeves cover her hands and the hem brushes the tops of her knees. 

Rey crawls back into bed. The black fabric of Ben’s clothes envelop her, and she takes deep, lingering breaths, trying to seal the memory of his scent in her mind before it fades completely. She plucks at the fabric and rubs it against her cheek, staring at the wall. Her eyelids are heavy, and she lets them close. She touches her belly, palm flat against the skin. She’s been doing that a lot lately. She traces small, wandering circles over her skin with the pad of her thumb. With her eyes closed, she slips state of semi-consciousness, soothed by the movement of her fingers and the knowledge of the tiny life nestled inside. She dips her toes into the Force’s waters and let herself sink, until it’s like she’s sitting at the bottom of the sea. Everything’s quiet, undisturbed. Rey reaches for the child nestled in her womb, trying to detect its light. For a moment, all was quiet, and then a jolt runs through her, like a ripple spreading across the surface of a pond. 

Her child, brushing against her mind. A shiver runs through her. It almost fills the lump of damaged nerves and ragged skin where their bond should be. Almost. She tries to catch the tendrils of sensation and light in her hands. It reaches out, and she reaches back. It recognizes her, and something innate and primordial in her recognizes it, too, like an animal knows the scent of her offspring. 

Leia told her she could feel Ben during her pregnancy. 

_“The bond between a mother and child is strong, stronger than anything. Stronger, perhaps, than the bond you share with my son,”_ Leia said, solemnly. In her mind’s eye, Leia’s with her, taking her hand, guiding Rey toward her baby’s life force. _“There’s nothing in this universe more precious or powerful than life, and we’ve got the tools to bring life into this world. We create life, Rey. In that sense, we’re conduits of the Force. There’s nothing more powerful.”_

Rey catches a flash of sensation, blurred colors and shapes and a vague sense of contentedness. It’s barely more than a burst of static, a fluttering eyelash. She rubs slow, soothing circles over her belly, conveying all the warmth and love she can over the link between her and her child, hoping it understands. 

“I’m here,” she whispers, aloud. “You’re safe.” 

A ripple courses through her as that budding life stirs in response to her attentions, and Rey marvels it. After a while, the sensations ebb, but something remains—a whisper, a presence.

_You’re not alone._


	9. The Attack

Rey sits on a duracrete bench by the fountain in the courtyard of the senate building. She tries to meditate, focusing on the dusky red backs of her eyelids as she faces the sunlight, reaching into the depths of herself. The soft babbling of the fountain’s crystal water provides a white-noise backdrop to her concentration. The Force is loud in Hanna City, teeming with life and energy, and she listens to it. She reads the small, almost imperceptible shifts in its tides like stones diverting a stream and lets herself float in its current. The dreams that haunt her sleep prod at old wounds, and she uses this exercise to patch up the fraying edges. She centers herself, trying to heal the scars he left, but it’s a difficult task. Maybe impossible. 

_Only death can break a Force bond._

_You’re nothing, but not to me._

_Rey, be brave._

_These are the final steps._

_We’ll see each other again, in another lifetime._

_Rey?_

Rey’s eyes snap open. She rubs her temple, trying to silence the voices. She rises from the bench. All her strings and loose ends feel like they’re snagging, coming undone. She walks across the courtyard, trailing her fingers over the small, manicured leaves of the topiary dividing the cobbled pathways, ignoring the stiffness in her injured knee and the stares of passersby. She abandoned the elegant gowns and bedazzled robes for simpler clothing. Gray pants, a black, long-sleeved shirt, and supple leather boots; her lightsaber rests at her hip. She may as well be wearing a big neon sign. She looks out of place in the sea of greens and blues and purples, velvet and satin and silk, but she doesn’t care. 

She leaves the courtyard and sets off to find somewhere quieter, somewhere she can be alone to meditate and practice her forms. She crosses the street, keeping feelers out for a threat or sign of attack, watching the people milling about the marketplace. Her mind, though, wanders like it always does. To Ben, to the dream she’d had, to the sensations his fingers, his lips, his scent, painted across her skin, what he’d said, how he'd left her feeling so alone, so aching and empty . . .

It was a figment of her subconscious, something her overactive, grief-addled, traumatized brain had force-fed her. It’s logical, it makes sense, and yet . . . 

And yet she cannot keep some small part of her from wishing, from _believing_ , that it was something more. Was it a visitation? Was he waiting for her? Was he alive?

 _He died_ , she reminds herself. _You saw it. You_ felt _it._

She had. She’d felt him torn from her as if a hot blade had slipped between her ribs and cut out something vital. She felt his energy, his life-force, leave her. It stole all the breath from her lungs and left a cold, silent agony in its wake. She wondered if he’d felt the same thing when she’d died. If he'd felt the loss of her like a limb torn from his body and decided he couldn’t live with it. She doesn't blame him. If it had been the other way around, she would’ve done the same goddamn thing.

His finds her, even here, in her waking moments, and with it comes a strange, vague presence: the phantom limb he'd hacked off. 

_I wouldn't have had it any other way,_

Great, she's hearing voices now. 

He’s dead, and she can’t explain the dreams any more than she can explain the ragged hole in her chest where their bond should be, cannot explain why she cannot feel him, why he hasn’t ever, not once, visited her as a Force ghost. She cannot accept that he would abandon her. 

_Would he?_

The thought sends her into a spiral of insecurities, and she pushes them away, sealing them in the dark recesses of her mind. Her parents had abandoned her; she’d been trying to separate that from her self-worth all her life. Ben was different. Ben wouldn’t do that. He was the only one who truly saw her. He had darkness, but so does she. He understood her because he was, in a lot of ways, the same. (She has to bite back the vicious realization that she’d begun to think of him in the past tense.) He wouldn’t leave her to deal with this on her own, and with a child on the way. Not if he had a choice in the matter. 

A small, wary voice in the back of her mind needles at her. 

He had. He had left her. He’s gone, and she’s alone, and she cannot reconcile that truth with the Ben Solo she knew, or _thought_ she knew. The more she ruminates, the more she convinces herself the Ben Solo she knew was nothing more than an ideal she’d built up in her head. It was a bad habit, one that had gotten her in more than one spot of trouble. She had too much faith in people. She was too forgiving. She let herself get hurt, again and again and again if it meant she was accepted and wanted. 

She waited for her parents. She hero-worshipped Han, trusted Luke, and shipped herself to the _Supremacy_ , to Ben, because of the future she’d seen and wanted so desperately. 

He represented something she needed, so she fell in love with idea of him. 

The other part of her, the part of her that’s infinitely more dangerous, reacts to this train of thought with revulsion. She knew him as well as she knew her own mind. They were irrevocably, inexplicably connected, bonded, dyadic, and he _loved_ her. He really, truly loved her, despite her brokenness, and heaven and hell wouldn’t keep him from crawling back to her. 

_So, why hadn’t he?_

She fishes for an explanation, knowing all the while just how dangerous this game is. It gives her hope, and hope, in all its beauty, is a dangerous thing. 

The path opens to a grove of Arboray trees. Their leaves shade the ground beneath her feet. A flock of small, yellow birds flit in and out of the canopy. Rey treads lightly. The grove is secluded from city’s activity, and quieter. She’s not used to cities like this, with so many people and no privacy. 

Rey reaches a clearing and draws her lightsaber, falling into a defensive stance and igniting it. The twin, yellow blades spring to life, humming in her hand.It’s been a long while since she’s practiced with the weapon and the familiarity of its weight soothes some of the wariness from her bones. Her muscles uncoil, her mind clears.

Her knee is healing and it’s giving her less and less trouble these days. When she lunges toward an invisible foe, it barely protests. Spurred on, she runs through a few, familiar maneuvers and pushes herself to try a range of new moves and fighting styles. She tries out Ben’s fighting style, which is heavier-footed, reliant on blunt force and offense-focused. She relies on quickness and focuses on defense, but Leia always told her to push herself into new territory, to learn, to grow. Even Ben’s fighting style is familiar. Maybe it’s their bond, she thinks. Maybe he’d bled into her as much as she’d bled into him. Maybe their edges and lines and borders had well and truly dissolved.

Rey wields the Force alongside the saber like a sixth sense. She closes her eyes, trying to acclimate herself to fighting without sight. It’s a long time before she disengages the weapon and returns it to her belt, and by then, the sun is setting on Chandrila and the sky is tinged gold. 

She fingers the switch of her lightsaber, feeling calmer, more grounded. Blood rushes in her ears and sweat drips down her brow. It’s a major improvement. Practicing with the saber, removed from the endless ebb and flow of energy in the capital, which feels more and more like relentless chatter in her ears, takes her out of the endless game of tag she plays with her own thoughts and into a calmer, steadier space. It centers her, and she relishes the feeling, the escape, the freedom to focus on other things, if just for a little while, before reality comes crashing back down. 

She makes her way out of the Arboray grove and through the streets dissecting the city, returning to the city circle as night falls.

* * *

She keeps herself busy. The days pass, and she tries to keep her mind off Ben and the dreams that plague her sleep. She attends council meetings as an honorary member and offers input when it’s requested of her. She’s no diplomat, but she knows what life is like in the corners of the galaxy where people live by the portion and fight tooth and nail to survive, and that makes all the difference. 

She meditates, she trains, she pores over Ben’s map and reads the Jedi Texts even though she barely understands a word of them, and in the privacy of her quarters she puts a hand on her belly and talks to their baby, trying to get acquainted. Sometimes, she even sings. 

She explores the city, traversing the busy streets and speaking with merchants and shop owners, acclimating herself to the ebb and flow of life in Hanna City. BB-8 accompanies her. He's a chatterbox, and a welcome distraction.

She collects artifacts, little gifts given to her by merchants like Tari Shik or pretty stones she finds by the canal. She supposes it’s a residual habit from her scavenging days, but she’d decided she won’t deny herself small pleasures and the jewelry and stones lined up on her windowsill add a bit of beauty and wonder to her quarters. She’s spent so much of her time carving out a life with so little; it’s nice to have these little possessions, mementos attached to a pair of kind eyes or the squeeze of a hand or the babble of a small child. Her favorite gift is the one given to her by a child no older than four or five—a beautiful, violet flower plucked from the gardens in the city circle. Once its petals dried out, she pressed it between the pages of one of the Jedi Texts, and its scent lingers in the binding. 

* * *

Rey wakes up slowly. She’s not needed in any meetings today, and Finn and Poe have been radio silent on her commlink, wrapped up in their respective responsibilities. She takes breakfast in her quarters and eats on the balcony, sipping orange juice from a glass and nibbling on toast that’s infinitely better than the polystarch she lived off of on Jakku, which tasted like wet cardboard more than anything. Rey watches a pair of children play in the courtyard, shooting at one another with toy blasters. Her smile falters, thinking of the little girl on the holovid, the blaster pressed against her skull. 

After she’s showered and dressed, belly pleasantly full, she slips out of her quarters and into the sun. It’s late in the morning, and the marketplace is buzzing. She knows the streets well enough to find a shortcut around the crowds. She ducks into a narrow alleyway. As she rounds the corner to cut onto the main street she bumps into someone, knocking their bag to the ground. 

“Sorry!” Rey yelps, bending to retrieve the bag. “Let me get that for you.” 

She straightens, and a flash of silver cuts through her peripheral vision before her eyes fall on the blade protruding from her abdomen. 

Her lips form a perfect “o” as her hands go to her stomach, watching the dark stain spreading over the fabric of her shirt. Bright spots swim in her line of vision and her knees quiver, threatening to give out. He wrenches the dagger from her skin and grabs her by the hair. He presses the dagger to her throat. The blade slices a thin, shallow line in her skin. 

_“No!”_ she chokes, Force-pushing him backward. She drops to her knees, one hand pressed to the wound in her stomach, the other reaching for her saber. White hot tendrils of panic curl around her heart. Her attacker recovers and lunges toward her, but she’s ready. She jumps to her feet and buries the lightsaber in his chest, knocking the dagger from its hand. The weapon clatters to the ground. She expects to find the eyes of the enemy staring at her from underneath the hood and gasps when there’s no eyes to speak of. Underneath the hood there’s nothing but black. Where her lightsaber should’ve met flesh and bone, it slides through the figure as easily as if it were piercing a shadow. The shadow drops to its knees and disintegrates. Rey blinks, trying to make sense of the sight before her as her attacker turns to dust, leaving her alone in the deserted street. 

Rey sinks to her knees, coughing, hands pressed over her stomach. The bloodstain grows in circumference and her vision dims. She tastes the unmistakable, metallic tang of blood in her mouth. Her eyes land on the dagger lying on the cobbled street, stained crimson with her blood. 

_The baby,_ she thinks, _gods, the baby!_ A steel fist of dread squeezes her heart. Her fingers fumble at her belt as she tries to retrieve her commlink. 

“Finn!” she gasps. “Poe, anyone . . .” she begs. She lurches to her feet, retrieving the dagger. Her blood oozes through the spaces between her fingers and drips onto the duracrete. 

_“Rey?”_ A voice answers. _“Rey . . it’s . . . where . . . signal . . . Rey?”_

The voice cuts in and out, then fades, altogether _._ Rey staggers down the street, clutching her stomach. She reaches the marketplace, attracting stares. Rey’s hearing fades in and out. The sounds from the marketplace blend into one another, and they’re watered down and distant, as if she’s sitting at the bottom of the ocean.

_The baby._

She falls, knees hitting the cobblestone. Someone’s screaming her name. She feels a hand cover both of hers as they clutch the wound in her stomach. A bit of warmth runs through her body, stemming from the place where the dagger tore throughher flesh.

 _Rey._ Luke’s voice, reaching to her over a lifetime, over time and space. 

_"Rey!"_ Finn’s voice on the commlink, a burst of static. 

_Rey._ Ben’s voice echoes in her ear. Her eyelids flutter, and she’s staring into his eyes, which hold hers through a film of tears. She feels his hand clamped over the wound, the last barrier between her blood and the ground, and he’s telling her to hold on, _hold on, Rey_. She tries. Oh, how she tries. For him. She grasps at the last, flimsy edges of consciousness as it ebbs away. She feels a pair of arms supporting her back and knees as someone lifts her, before consciousness slips from her grasp. 

* * *

Rey opens her eyes. There’s a very bright, white light above her. She feels like she’s looking at everything through a thick, gauzy haze. Her eyes are impossibly heavy, impossibly hard to move, and it takes a her while to muster up the strength to tear her gaze away from the ceiling. The steady, rhythmic beeping of her heart rate on the machine deals a sharp stab of pain through her skull. After a while, black spots invade her vision, so she squeezes her eyes shut. 

It’s hard to string two thoughts together, and it takes her a moment to reassure herself that she’s alive and breathing and not floating in some version of an afterlife. She’s lying in a medcenter, hooked up to a thousand different machines. An IV bites at her inner elbow. A bacta patch is sealed over the wound in her abdomen. The beeping of the monitor attests to her aliveness. 

Slowly, her body comes back to her, and the pain comes with it. There’s a dull, throbbing ache in her abdomen, where the dagger sunk through her flesh. She didn’t feel it at first. It didn’t even register until she saw the blood. The blood . . . the dagger . . . _the baby_ . . . 

_The baby!_

Rey tries to sit up, but the action sends a wave of nausea breaking over her head. She waits for it to abate. She calls for help, but no one hears her. She cracks her eyelids, searching for a call button, and she’s about to rip out the IV in her arm to set off an alarm when a med droid appears in the doorway. 

_“You requested—”_

“The baby,” she pleaded, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. “Is the baby alright?” 

_“Your injury does not appear to have harmed the embryo,”_ the droid says, gently. The droid taps a command into the computer and turns the monitor toward her, so she can see the hills and valleys of the doppler tracking the baby’s heartbeat. Tears well in Rey’s eyes and slip down her cheeks. Relief floods her system, and she lays back, clamping a hand over her mouth as strangled sobs build in the back of her throat. She tries to stop the tears but they keep coming, and she feels so undone and out of control but she doesn’t care, because their baby is safe, she’s safe, and right now that’s enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story has taken on a mind of its own, but I think I finally know where we're headed. Many thanks to all of you who have expressed your love for this story so far, you're all wonderful and my biggest cheerleaders. I've been feverishly writing, more chapters to come!


	10. The Dagger

“We don’t know who it was. There weren’t any witnesses,” Finn says. He sits by her bed, watching Poe pace by the door. 

“It was a shadow,” Rey says, numbly. She’s propped up against a mountain of pillows, attacking a cube of jello with her spoon. It’s the first solid food she’s had in more than twenty-four hours. “It didn’t have a face.” 

“You’re in shock, Rey. You didn’t get a clear look—”

“I know what I saw,” she snaps. “It was a shadow. When I stabbed it, it exploded into dust.”

“That’s impossible,” Finn says, slowly.

“No,” Rey says, shaking her head. “It’s not.” She thinks of Luke’s Force projection, of Palpatine living in hiding without a proper body for almost fifty years, of the darkest unexplored territories in the cosmic realm. It’s far from impossible, and that’s what scares her. 

“Who would do this? Who would want to kill you?” 

“Maybe it was a First Order sympathizer, or one of Kylo Ren’s allies,” Poe says.

Finn shoots her a significant look.

“There’s gotta be someone out there who still wants the Jedi gone.” 

Rey shakes her head. 

“They weren’t trying to kill me, I was just in the way,” Rey draws a shaky a breath, thinking of the dagger, buried to the hilt in her stomach. “They were trying to kill the baby.” 

A heavy silence follows her words. Poe’s jaw works. 

“ _Force_ , Rey,” Finn says, lowly, “why didn’t you tell—”

“—what about the dagger?” she asks, cutting him off. "Is it Sith?"

“We’re not sure. I’m having a protocol droid examine it,” Poe says. 

She nods. She drops her spoon onto her tray and pushes it away. Poe’s commlink pings. 

“I gotta go.” He approaches Rey’s bedside and presses a kiss to her forehead. “Rest. I’ll see you later.” 

Once he leaves, Finn scoots her closer to her bedside. She hands him her empty tray and he puts it on the table by the monitor tracking vitals, both hers and the baby’s. He worries his lip, eyes fixed on the floor. 

“Say it,” Rey snaps.

“What?” 

“Don’t play dumb. Say it. Say what you’re thinking.” 

Finn sighs. 

“Why didn’t tell me?” 

“I didn’t realize I was under oath to tell you every tiny detail—”

“This isn’t tiny. This is huge, Rey, this is _gargantuan_.”

“I was going to tell you,” Rey says, dropping the facade. “I just . . . I didn’t know how.” 

“Well, you could use words. For a start.” 

She rolls her eyes. 

“How?” he asks, in a ghost of a whisper. 

“Well, you see, when a man and a woman—” 

“You know what I mean!” he cries, indignantly. “Spare me the gory details.” 

Rey sighs, looking at her hands. 

“Actually, it didn’t happen that way,” she says, quietly. 

Finn cocks an eyebrow. 

“It was . . . immaculate conception, kind of, I don’t know . . .” Rey says, picking at a scab on her hand. “It’s a child of the Force.” 

"Bantha shit!" 

It's true!" 

"It's Kylo's, isn't it?" 

She nods. 

“When Ben healed me on Exegol, he transferred his life force into me. When that happened, I dunno, it made _this_ ,” she places a hand on her belly, “possible.” 

“ _Force,_ Rey,” Finn says. He rubs the stubble on his chin.

“You can always terminate.” 

“Finn!” 

“Just saying.” 

“I’m keeping it,” she says. “It was meant to happen, and I’m glad . . . I’m just . . . trying to wrap my head around it.” She looks at him. “Try to understand.”

“I’m trying, I just . . .” he trails off. “It’s just a shock, that’s all.” 

“Goddamn, though. Kylo Ren. You know, patricide runs in the family. You’re not the least bit concerned . . . ?” 

“Finn,” Rey warns. He sighs, taking her hand. He squeezes it. 

“I’m happy for you, I really am, I’m just . . . processing.” 

“I know it’s a lot, and it sounds crazy, but the machines don’t lie. This is my destiny. I can _feel_ it.” 

“I never was a big believer in destiny,” he deadpans, repeating his previous words. Rey laughs. 

“Neither was I, until I got wrapped up in this.” She bites her lip. “But there are some things you just _know_ , even if it doesn’t make sense.” 

Finn smiles. 

“The little guy’s gotta have a cool uncle to stick around and teach him stuff. Like all the best swear words and how to shoot a blaster . . .” 

“You’ve got terrible aim!” 

“Not true! I’ve put in my time on the shooting range. I’ve gotten pretty good with this thing!” he cries, indignantly, patting the holster at his belt. Rey rolls her eyes. 

“Yeah, well, if you try to teach my child how to shoot a blaster you won’t get be getting visitation rights, let me make that quite clear.”

“Fair enough. And Force knows he’ll pick up curse words from you pretty quickly.” 

“That’s bantha shit!” 

“My point, exactly,” Finn says, cocking an eyebrow.

“You’re insufferable.” 

“You know you love me.” 

Rey can’t suppress her smile any longer. 

“It’s a boy,” she tells him. 

“How do you know?” 

She smiles a secret sort of smile. 

“A feeling.” 

* * *

Rey’s confined to a few days in the medcenter while the bacta patch on her abdomen ties up all her loose ends. The med droids examined her for internal wounds and found nothing too concerning. With nothing to do, and sparse company from Finn and Poe as they try to drop in between council meetings and recruitment projects, she starts to go a little crazy. 

She spends most of her time thinking. She stares at the ceiling, racking her brain for any inkling of who her attacker was and how he tracked her here, why he wanted to kill her baby and how he knew of its existence in the first place. She guesses he’s a Force-user, or he works for one, and that her baby’s presence in the force, already perceptible, had alerted him to her location. It’s far-fetched, but it’s possible. It’s likely whoever wants to kill her baby is aware of his lineage. Whoever it is wants the Skywalkers to end. For good, this time. 

The shadow is gone, but without a body to bury, Rey isn’t so quick to believe it’s no longer a concern. Whoever wants to end the Skywalker line is still out there, waiting in the dark. No one’s every really gone, for better or for worse.

A shiver crawls up Rey’s spine. She puts her hands on her belly and whispers soothing, meaningless words, as if he can hear her. As if she can keep all the world’s perils at bay, but she knows that’s impossible. She swore to protect their baby and she intends to uphold that promise until she’s buried six feet underground.

She slides in and out of dreams, and they’re convoluted and hazy but sometimes she catches the feeling of a hand in hers or a familiar voice. Sometimes she’s sure it’s Luke or her parents, and sometimes the voices belong to Jedi who lived and died long before her birth, but more often, it’s Ben. Sometimes she feels him on her skin or she senses him like he’s there in the room with her, but she cannot see him. It’s like he’s standing behind a two-way mirror, and he’s banging on the glass, trying to get her attention, and all she can see is her reflection. The dreams are a product of the cocktail of painkillers they’d given her, she tells herself, nothing more. When she dreams like this she always wakes up with wet cheeks and a hollowness in her so loud and insurmountable she can barely breathe. 

Poe and Finn keep her updated on any news from the council, but most of the developments don’t directly concern her, and more often than not the three of them recycle the same conversation topics. It’s well over halfway through her recovery before Poe brings her any real news. 

“The dagger is the work of Edris Gresher, a metalsmith and black market weapons dealer on Tatooine,” he tells her. “It’s got his insignia on the hilt. We tracked him to Mos Eisley.”

Rey nods. 

“Tell me you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking,” Poe says. 

“I’m thinking what you think I’m thinking,” she confirms, solemnly. “You can’t stop me.” 

“I know, that’s the issue.” 

“You would do the same, if it were your family.”

“Rey,” Poe starts, “this guy’s dangerous. He’s got a bunch of goons working for him . . . gangsters, crime syndicates . . . I don’t like it.” 

“I’ve gotta protect my family,” she says, softly. “Whatever it takes.” 

Poe sighs. He squeezes her hand. 

“I know.” 

It’s not much, but it’s a start. Once she’s out of this kriffing sickbay, she’s going to hunt down Gresher and find out who’s trying to destroy Ben’s last gift to her, and she won’t rest until his blood’s on the ground. 

* * *

She grits her teeth, knuckles white on the edges of the table. She’s lying on her back, staring into the bright, aggressively artificial lights overhead as a team of med droids remove the microsutures in her wound. There’s a lumpy, puckered scar to the left of her belly button. They’ve weaning her off painkillers, and she’s glad for it. The meds make her foggy. 

She’s released from the medcenter by midday. In her quarters, she goes to the ‘fresher and showers, scrubbing the medical, antiseptic scent from her skin. She brushes her teeth, combs her hair and sticks it in a single bun. She’s unsteady on her feet, and each movement strains the new layer of skin stretching over her injury. She moves gingerly. 

She retrieves her worn, leather pack from the closet and stows her belongings in it. Texts, Luke and Leia’s lightsabers, Ben’s map, Tari Shik’s ring and other gifts she’d received, a change of clothes. 

Every day she spends here is another day she’s a sitting duck. Whoever’s hunting her knows her location, but they hadn’t pursued her within the walls of the medcenter, which means they’re waiting to attack when she’s alone. They’re either unwilling or unable to get their hands dirty, likely due to unlimited resources or intelligence, and Rey strongly suspects those limitations are the reason she’s still alive. They’re going to try to draw her out. She has to leave, has to hide. 

She has to find them before they find her. 

She thinks of Finn and lump hardens in her throat. A pang of remorse shoots through her, sharp and clean, but she buries it. There will be time for explanations, apologies, and _I-had-to’s_. She’ll say her goodbyes later, when she’s off-world and he can’t stop her.

Rey double-checks the compartment for any stray items, and pauses in the ‘fresher, staring at the colorful bottles of soaps and lotions sitting on the shelf. After a moment’s deliberation, she retrieves her pack and sweeps the shelf’s contents into it. She feels silly, stealing soap from the senate building. 

_I might need it_ , she counters the voice in her head. After all, she had a long journey ahead and she hasn’t the slightest idea whether or not the Falcon is well-stocked in exotic lotions. She assumed it isn’t. 

_Once a scavenger, always a scavenger,_ the voice chirps, and Rey’s cheeks pink. 

Old habits die hard. She’s reverted back to her old ways. Taking what isn’t hers, squirreling it away. Burning with shame, she opens her pack and returns the soaps to their shelf, taking care to line them up the way she’d found them.

She clips her lightsaber and blaster to the belt hugging her hips and pulls her hood over her head. She makes for the compartment door. Before she reaches it, it slides open and Finn barrels through the doorway. 

“Poe told me what you’re doing.” 

“I’m going to Tatooine.” 

“Now? Without saying goodbye?”

Rey shrugs. 

“I knew you’d try to stop me.” 

“Damn right, ‘cause it’s stupid.” 

“I have to protect my family.” 

"You're _my_ family," he says, his voice barely more than a whisper, and it's enough to stop her in her tracks. 

“ _Don’t do this_ ,” he says, urgently. “It’s too dangerous.” 

“I can handle myself.”

“Better than any of us, but—”

“I have to go.” 

“I can’t let you go alone.” 

“Finn—”

“Let me go with you.” 

“You’ve got your own responsibilities. What about your mission? They’re counting on you.” 

“That can wait. Your safety is my first priority.”

“I’m going, Finn. Alone. You can’t stop me.” He can’t. 

“ _Dammit_ , Rey.” 

His jaw works, and he opens his mouth, closes it again, searching for words. Rey braces herself for the next onslaught of useless arguing when he says something that stills whatever reply is already dancing on her tongue. 

“At least let me walk you to the hangar.” 

They forego the stairwell and take the turbolift, riding in silence. Rey twists her hands nervously, catching herself poking at the walls of his mind. She’d crossed a line. She’d betrayed his trust, and she can hear the blood rushing in her ears as the silence in the lift presses in, suffocating her. She thanks the stars when they reach ground level and the door slides open. 

Hanna City’s Spaceport is located on the west side of the city, less than a mile from the City Circle. Rey reaches into the Force, drawing it around herself like a security blanket, alerted toward any sign of another attack. She keeps her hand on the lightsaber at her hip. Finn flanks her, tense and unyielding. She tries to think of something to say to appease him but everything sounds stupid and half-assed in her head so she keeps her mouth shut. 

Once she reaches the hangar, an enthusiastic R2 astromech leads her to the _Falcon_ , primed and ready. Chewie left for Kashyyyk a few days ago, and he’d trusted her with the _Falcon_ with a warning to bring it back in one piece. 

“I will,” she’d promised, hugging the Wookie. 

Rey lowers the boarding ramp. She looks at Finn, and there’s a thousand things she should say but it all gets bogged up in her throat. 

_This is for the best,_ she tells herself. It’s best to cut the cord before he convinces her to stay. She can’t. It’s easiest to slip away. This is what she does best. She does what she needs to do to survive, scavenges whatever’s salvageable to keep herself going another day, another month. She will not let herself become a burden. Someone is hunting her, someone skilled with darkside magic. She cannot stay and risk endangering the Republic so sorely won, still in the foetal stages. She cannot put her friends in danger any more than she can stand in the way of Finn’s destiny, just as he cannot stand in the way of hers. 

“Finn—

Before she can finish, he throws his arms around her. She presses her face into his chest, throat knotting with unshed tears, because this is goodbye. 

He knows it, too. 

She clings to him, and there are a thousand things she should say, but she only manages three words. 

“I’ll miss you,” she says. Finn’s shoulders shake. When he pulls away, she’s horrified to find her own tears reflected in his eyes. 

“This isn’t goodbye,” he chokes, “not forever.” 

He releases her, and his thumb grazes her cheek. 

“Rey,” he begins, and his voice quivers. “Take care of yourself, okay?” 

She nods. He squeezes her hand, then lets it drop to her side. She steps onto the ramp and a voice cuts through the air. 

“Rey, wait!” 

She turns. Poe sprints through the hangar, BB-8 in tow, nearly toppling the poor R2 astromech and collides with a mechanic. 

“What’re you doing?” she asks, stepping down from the ramp. Poe slings an arm around Finn’s shoulders and tries to catch his breath. 

“You didn’t think I was gonna let you leave without saying goodbye, did you?” he pants.

“Of course not,” she says, softly. He wraps her in a tight hug, and when he breaks away his eyes shine with tears. 

“I’ve got something for you,” he says. “Just a little going away present. Nothin’ much.” 

“You shouldn’t have,” Rey deadpans. Poe cocks an eyebrow, clears his throat. 

“Drumroll, please.” 

Rey and Finn oblige, drumming a beat on the tops of their knees, and Poe steps aside. 

“BB-8?” 

The astromech beeps excitedly. 

“I don’t understand,” Rey says. 

“Take him. He’ll keep you company.” 

“I can’t.” 

“ _Take him._ You have more use for him than I do.”

“But—”

“No buts. Take him. _Please_.” A smile tugs at the corners of Poe’s mouth. “It’ll help me sleep at night, knowing he’s looking out for you.”

Rey smiles. She throws her arms around him.

“Thank you.” 

Finn pulls them both into a hug, and the three of them are smashed in an embrace and Rey doesn’t want it to end, but it does, and then she’s boarding the Falcon and the door slides shut, and then it’s just her and BB-8 and a thousand things she should’ve said dancing on her tongue. 

She wipes the tears from her cheeks and draws a shaky breath, repairing her fraying edges. This isn’t goodbye. This isn’t the last chapter in their story. 

Rey squares her shoulders pushes them out of the forefront of her mind and locks them in a dusty closet. Once she does, leaving becomes the easiest goddamn thing in the world. Too easy. 

In the cockpit, Rey coaxes the engine to life and double-checks the compressor. She primes the hyperdrive and types the coordinates into the navigation system. 

BB-8 asks where they're going. Rey stares at the blinking light on her star map. She fully intends to smoke Gresher out of his hidey hole on Mos Eisley, but she’s got unfinished business to attend to. She rearranges her face into something resembling a smile, but it’s a half-assed attempt. Dread settles in the pit of her stomach. 

“Back to Jakku.”


	11. The Homecoming

The tick marks scratched into the durasteel of _Hellhound Two_ multiply behind Rey’s eyelids, each a strike of burning white, until they’re all she can see. Each one marks a day she wasted on this sand heap. Each one marks a day she went to bed with her stomach still growling, dreaming of a pair of dark eyes, clutching a lie close to her heart because believing anything else was unbearable.

She trails a finger over the grooves in the steel and gasps, drawing her hand back as the metal burns her fingertip. She scrambles back and watches, dazed and horrified, as gouges appear in the metal. The gouges deepen, edges glowing red and molten, and they criss-cross over one another like the frenzied claw marks of an enraged animal. The thousands of tally marks are unrecognizable under the damage, and Rey stares, dumbfounded, trying to make sense of what she’s seeing. 

Rey steps toward the wall, lips pressed together and eyes flicking over the cuts in the metal. With a trembling finger, she touches the edge of a smoldering gouge and winces. She can feel the burn, but it doesn’t leave a mark on her skin. 

This is a memory. Her eyes trace another path across the smoldering metal. There’s only one weapon in existence that could do this much damage to durasteel.

Rey turns and finds herself face to face with Ben Solo. He stands in the middle of the walker, clutching that bloody red saber in a trembling fist. Sweat pours down his brow and mats in his hair. He licks his lips nervously, gaze fixed on her. Except he isn’t looking at her, he’s looking _through_ her, and a shiver crawls up Rey's toes as she looks at those eyes, so dark and full of so much pain, so much hate and fear. If looks could kill, she’d already be dead. 

Something shifts in him. Even if they didn’t share a bond she would’ve been able to sense it. His fingers flex on the hilt of his lightsaber, like he’s reaching for something, scenting something on the wind. His gaze drops to the ground. He deactivates the saber, and it cuts out with a hiss, leaving a deafening silence in its wake. He clenches his fist, lips pulled back in a snarl of frustration. When Rey turns her back on him to stare at the gouges in the wall, they’re gone. The tally marks glare at her from the durasteel, and the wall is still intact. 

The Force hums and shifts as the currents flow around her like she’s a stone in a stream. This is a memory, and she’d seen the destruction he’d wanted to inflict because their minds are bridged and the urge to introduce his lightsaber to that kriffing wall and destroy everything it stands for had been so strong in him, so strong it had blocked out everything else. 

He returns the lightsaber to his belt and approaches the wall. His jaw works as he trails his finger over the scratch marks, mirroring the exact path of her own finger. He’s wearing the usual cape and gloves, but he’d forewent the mask, and she’s glad for it. Her eyes trace the details of his face, trying to memorize them. Even in his darkness, he’s beautiful. 

Blood rushes in her ears as she struggles to make sense of what she’s seeing. If this is a memory, then he’d visited _Hellhound Two_ in her absence, likely after Crait and before Exegol. At some point, he’d treaded on the gravesite of her past. 

He looks so big in the cramped walker. He barely fits, and he has to keep his knees perpetually bent to avoid bumping his head against the ceiling. It’s would strike her as oddly comical if she hadn’t been able to read the pain in his eyes, the darkness warring in him. 

A jumble of emotions courses in his veins, like a drug in his bloodstream, and it filters across the bond. Rey feels the hatred, the anger, and something softer and thicker, too, sympathy and sadness and longing, as if it is her own.

Ben lets his hand fall to his side in a fist and turns away from the wall. He can’t look at it anymore. It pains him like a physical wound. He can feel the flesh memory of her hand, warm and small in youth, scratching these marks. He can feel her in these marks and in this wall and everywhere else, too. Even in this, darkest, poorest corner of the galaxy, her light touches everything. The tally marks are inescapable reminders of her lonely prison and all the days she spent alone in this wasteland. 

He longs for her, hates the ones who did this to her. He knows what it’s like to be abandoned, to wait and wonder and long for something he cannot have. He, too, is lying to himself, tearing himself apart. He hates because it’s easier than loving, destroys because it’s easier than letting go. He wants to take her pain into himself and hates that he cannot, hates that he cannot find her, that she’s still shutting him out after he opened himself to her, hates that he’s still trying to hold on.

He draws back slams a fist into the side of the walker. The durasteel doesn’t budge, and three of his knuckles split open, but he doesn’t flinch. He turns away from the goddamned wall of tally marks, by far the thing that haunts him most in a place overwhelmed by her ghost. 

He picks up the flower on the windowsill. It’s dead, and its petals are shriveled, crumbling to dust in his grip. He pinches the stem between his thumb and forefinger, his jaw working against the lump in his throat, and Rey, merely a visitor in this memory, feels the shape of the thoughts that chase through his mind. It’s an odd thing to put a name to, but she understands, inexplicably, the enormity of what he holds in his hand. It’s a quintessential piece of her, a piece he intends to keep for himself. He supposes he’s the scavenger in this equation, visiting her abandoned home, salvaging artifacts from a life he wasn’t a part of. 

She is his desert flower, his lifeline growing in the face of adversity, a promise of hope.

She watches the blood drip from his knuckles. 

He bends down, and the hem of his cape is coated in a layer of dust. When he straightens, he’s holding the doll she made out of an old Rebel flight suit. It’s coated in grime, and he brushes it clean, turning it over in his hand. He thumbs the rough stitching, and the ghost of a smile playing on his lips as reads the memories in it. He returns it to its place on the shelf among a collection of other trinkets, stones and hunks of metal warped by the sun. It’s such an odd sight, seeing him like this, outside of the sleek corridors of First Order flagships, unmasked and vulnerable, tidying up her shelves. 

His eyes sweep the rest of her space, the bedroll against the wall, Dosmit Raeh’s helmet, her collection of rusted tools. A thousand emotions chase across his face. 

In this small, private moment, his eyes give it all away. 

A jolt runs through her, and she’s whisked out of the memory. She stumbles against the wall, knees weak, head reeling. She drops to her knees. BB-8 beeps worriedly. She puts a hand on his domed head, trying to catch her breath. 

He loved her. 

It’s a plain and simple truth, one he’d been denying to himself for a while. He grasps at straws, these small pieces of a past life, so he can hold her if only for a moment. She exploded into his life and left shrapnel buried in his flesh. He doesn’t understand how or why she got under his skin, this vicious little sand rat of a girl, but he knows there’s no going back. She’s in his dreams and his bloodstream and he can’t get her out of his head, doesn’t want to. He’d pull stars out of the sky for her. He’d obliterate fleets for her. 

He loved her, even as Kylo Ren, before Exegol, before he’d resurrected Ben Solo. He’d loved her, all of her, and at some point in the eight months following the Battle of Crait he’d taken a shuttle to Jakku to salvage the pieces she’d left behind. 

If she’d dreamt of an ocean, he’d dreamt of a desert. If she’d dreamt of a pair of dark eyes, he’d dreamt of hazel ones. If she’d dreamt of a boy haunted by voices in the shadows, he’d dreamt of a girl scratching marks into durasteel. 

If only she’d realized it sooner. They could’ve had time. 

Now, she has only a memory. A memory and a ghost. 

* * *

  
  


Rey watches the sunset with her back pressed against the durasteel of _Hellhound Two_. She nibbles on polystarch as the sun slips behind the dunes and the sky bleeds red and purple. BB complains about the sand in his circuitry. 

“I know,” Rey says. “We won’t be here long.” 

_I hope._

It’s too easy to slip back into her old life. The familiarity of life on Jakku weighs on her like a ghost. The scratches on the wall haunt her, as does Ben’s presence. The knowledge that Ben had come here, seeking _her—her_ memories, her belongings—hits like blow to the sternum and leaves her breathless and gasping, clawing for a lifeline as the tides swell. 

She cannot stay here, but she’s lived on Jakku long enough to know you’ve gotta have a death wish to go wandering the desert at night. She sits on the bedroll with her back against the wall. Her gaze sweeps the walker. It looks so much smaller than she remembers. 

Scavengers had stripped her makeshift home of valuables, bits of metal, some paneling, but the rest is intact. Her doll, her flowers, everything she keeps for sentimental value, remains intact. Sentimentality won’t get you a penny in this place. 

Her gaze lingers on the doll propped against the shelf. Everything reeks of Ben Solo. 

He’d stood here. He’d held the doll, traced his fingers over the marks on the wall. His presence lingers. 

_As if he never left._

Rey reaches up and pries a loose panel away from the wall and fishes around until her fingers close around the binding of a book and balances it on her lap, brushing the dust from its cover. A wave of relief washes over her. She opens the book and skims the first page, a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. She’d hidden it away to prevent thieves from getting their hands on her most prized possession. 

She’d traded in a week’s worth of earnings for it when she was fourteen. Books are rare, and she’d decimated her savings to get her hands on the story, which followed the tale of a bounty hunter traveling the Unknown Regions in search of a prince she’d fallen in love with. Rey read the story so many times in her youth the pages had begun to peel away from the binding. It was the only thing that kept her sane when vicious sandstorms trapped her in _Hellhound Two_ , sometimes for weeks at a time. Civan and Elara kept her entertained as sand blotted out the sun and battered at the walls of the walker. 

Maybe it’s childish, but she doesn’t care. Her return to these pages feels like a homecoming, and she begins to read. It pacifies the turbulent thoughts battering at the walls of her mind. 

She reads aloud for BB, who listens, asking a question or two until she shushes him. She reads until her eyelids grow heavy and sets the book aside with a yawn, giving in to her exhaustion and closing her eyes. 

When she opens them, Ben is watching her. He’s sitting back on his heels, leaning forward, his wrists draped loosely over his knees. It’s hauntingly familiar, and Rey is transported to another place, another lifetime. 

The interrogation call on Starkiller Base. 

_You’re my guest . . ._

“Is it always gonna be this way?” she asks, sitting up. “Or do you just like watching me sleep?”

Ben smiles, and the sight is a sucker punch in the stomach. It makes her ache. How could the universe be so cruel? His smiles numbered so few in life. It’s beautiful in its rarity, but she is greedy. She wants to bear witness to more of his smiles, wants to be the reason he does. Now he only smiles in her dreams. 

“You’re visiting more often, now,” she remarks. “Did you get bored of the afterlife?”

“I thought you might like some company.”

“Nothing’s changed,” she says. “You’re still hard to get rid of.” 

“You’re still lonely.” 

“You left me.”

“I didn’t have a choice," he says gently. "Even if I did, I wouldn't have changed a thing. If I had to do it again I would, without hesitation." 

"Why?"

"You know why." 

Rey falls silent. Her gaze drops into her lap.

“You’re not really here, You’re just my imagination,” she says, because believing otherwise would give her false hope, and she doesn’t know if she can survive any more broken promises. 

_“I’ve gone completely crazy.”_

“Crazy people don’t usually know they’re going crazy,” Ben remarks. 

“Maybe,” Rey concedes. Her smile falters. She looks into his eyes, wonderfully brown, the darkest whiskey, and full of the same reverence they held when he held her in his arms on Exegol, as the world crashed down around them. Before those wonderfully brown eyes closed for the last time. 

“Why did you come back here?” he asks. There’s pain in his voice. “You belong where it’s green, where you can be happy. Not on this _trash heap_.” He spits the words like they’re poison. 

“I didn’t realize you hated sand so much.” 

“ _Rey_ ,” he pleads, and behind the word, there’s the weight of the thousands of scratch marks on the wall, the thousands of nights she’d fallen asleep with tears drying on her cheeks. He’s seen her pain, sees her exiling herself to this wasteland, and it tears him apart. 

His gaze shifts toward the scratch marks on the wall. 

“Do you still count the days?” he says, quietly. This time, though, it’s not a blow intended to make her bleed, but soft, agonized plea. Rey watches his fingers flex, ever so slightly, for want of a weapon (the nearest blunt object will do). He still wants to destroy that wall, the marks she'd scratched into it. It still haunts him. 

“You’re still running.”

“I have to say goodbye,” she says quietly. 

He rises and goes to her, catching her face in his hands. 

“You’re alone.” His despair is a tangible thing. She would’ve felt it through the Force even if they didn’t share a bond. “Again.” 

“I can’t do this.” 

“You're right, you can't,” he agrees, “I won’t stand by and watch you throw your life away with both hands. You can't waste away on this dirtball. _Jakku?_ Really?" 

“No, I mean I can’t do _this,”_ she gestures between them. “I can’t keep talking to you like you’re really here. Like you didn’t die on Exegol. I watched you die. I _felt_ you die, and now I'm just crazy.” 

“Rey—"

“No.” She turns away from him, folding her arms across her chest. “You’re not actually here and I’m having hallucinations.” Her lip trembles. She presses two fingertips to her mouth, gaze fixed on the opposite wall. 

“You’re not going mad," he says softly. He touches her shoulders. She shrugs his hand away. 

“I am, because sane people don't see dead people. You’re a figment of my subconscious. You’re a symptom of trauma and post-traumatic stress. That's what any sensible person would say. You’re a fever-dream cocktail my mind cooked up to avoid dealing with reality.

"I can’t keep doing this. Everytime I wake up, it’s like you die all over again. I can’t sleep, because I know that when I close my eyes I’ll see you and when I open them you’ll be gone. Do you know what that feels like? To have the one person in the world you love ripped from you, again and again and again?” 

Ben holds her gaze. 

“Yes,” he says, “I know exactly what that feels like.” 

Rey falls silent, pinching the bridge of her nose. When she speaks, she has to fight to keep her voice steady. 

“Good. Then you know how much it hurts. I can’t take it anymore. I won’t survive it.” 

“ _Rey . . ._ ” 

“Leave me alone.” 

"I’m here. I don't know how or why, but I'm here."

“Shut up,” she snaps, not looking at him. She feels his arms fall around her, pulling her against his body, and she wants so badly to melt into him, to get so wrapped up in him that they lose all their edges, but a warning bell goes off in her head. She draws back a fist and punches him in the mouth. 

He reels back, eyes widening in surprise. 

Then she’s on him, screaming obscenities, punching and kicking and scratching every inch she can reach. He catches her wrists in his hands, so easily ensnaring her, and his face is nothing but soft edges, eyes shining with tears. She wants to punch him for that, too, because it would be so much easier if he was angry. It would be so much easier if they were still enemies, if he was still swinging a lightsaber in her face. Even then, he never truly saw her as an enemy. He never wanted to hurt her. Even on Starkiller Base, he was pulling his punches. 

She tries to escape his grasp, but it’s no use. All the fight goes out of her, and she slumps against him. He lets go of her wrists and wraps his arms around her frame, and she bursts into tears. He’s so big, and his body surrounds her like a fortress, as if holding her like that, so completely wrapped in his arms, could somehow keep her safe and out of harm’s way. It’s like coming home, and for the briefest moment she feels safe, she feels loved, and the pain in her chest almost disappears completely, she buries her head in his chest and _cries_ , because a moment is all they have. She can feel his body shaking and knows he’s crying, too. 

Maybe it’s the ghosts in this place. Maybe it’s because she can’t escape him—she can’t cut him out any more than she can cut out her own heart. Mostly, it’s because he’s here and he’s so close and so real and she knows that when their time is up it’ll hurt as bad as it did on Exegol, because each time he leaves it's a new, sharper knife slipping between her ribs.

It’s because of all the lost time. She tries to do the math. How many days would they have had if she’d taken his hand on the _Supremacy_? How many years will they be afforded in the next life, if the gods are kind? 

She holds him, and he fills her up, numbing her like a morphine drip, and then he seals his mouth to hers. 

She tastes the salt of their tears. These aren’t the hungry, desperate kisses they’d shared in her bed but softer, gentler kisses, and each one holds a promise and a thousand little certainties. 

Ben pulls away. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, voice quivering. He pushes a strand of hair behind her ear. 

“Shut up,” she tells him, but her voice has lost its venom. It's a little desperate, a little breathless, and then she lifts her chin to recapture his lips. When they break apart, Rey braces her hands on either side of his face, drinking him in. 

“I’m haunted by you,” she whispers, her thumb ghosting his bottom lip.

“I know.” 

“I want to hate you. I want to let you go, but I can’t. I can’t cut the cord. I can’t forget you. I don’t want to.” She touches his cheek. “I don’t want to let you go.” 

Ben’s lip trembles. He swallows hard. 

“Then don’t.” 

His arms encircle her. He pulls her against the wall of his chest and presses his face to her stomach, breathing her in. Her fingers thread through his hair. He closes his eyes, and she seizes this private moment to look, _really_ look, at him. His sharp brow and swollen lips and the spattering of moles and beauty marks knotted in the hills and valleys of his face. She trails her fingertip over each one, mapping them into constellations.

His is unconventional, dulcet beauty. He is everything dark, like raven’s wings or onyx or the shadowy pools in underground caves or the spaces between stars. Rey dips her chin, kissing the tops of his eyelids, coaxing them open. His lips part slightly as he gazes at her, drinking her in. 

Slowly, she moves her hand so it’s hovering over his sternum. Her fingers tremble. Ben covers her hand with his own, pressing it against his chest. He’s flesh and bone, and his heart beats steadily beneath her fingertips. If he was a ghost, her hand would sink right through him, so why is he flesh and bone? Why can she feel his heart beating so steadily beneath her fingertips?

“How is this possible? How are _you_ possible?”

Ben reaches up, tangling his fingers in her hair and caressing the nape of her neck. 

“I don’t know.” 

Rey closes her eyes, leaning her cheek against his crown, drawing a line down the slope of his nose. If this is all the time they get, in her cotton-candy fantasies, then she may as well delay the inevitable, before reality knocks on her door. 

“We’ll meet in another lifetime,” she whispers, fiddling with a loose thread in his sweater. She meets his gaze and drowns in his eyes. “I want to believe that.”

She lays down and he lays beside her, rearranging his legs to fit onto her impossibly small bedroll. He wraps his arms around her slim frame. She shifts so her head rests over the place where his heart beats. 

_“Come back to me.”_


	12. The Graveyard

If Jakku, like Tatooine, is the armpit of the galaxy, Niima Outpost is a discolored mole with a few hairs growing out of it. If Jakku is Nowhere, Niima Outpost is the blip just south of Nowhere. It’s a dangerous place, filled with cut-throats and criminals, off-beat spacers, slave masters and every variety of scum in the galaxy. It hasn’t changed, either. As Rey enters the outpost, hood pulled over her head and fingers poised on the lightsaber at her hip, she’s hit with a wave of nostalgia—not the good kind. It’s nauseating, and it writhes in her gut like a headless snake. The smell of fried Bloggin and unwashed bodies and cigarra smoke stings her nostrils. An oily merchant with wrinkled, sun-darkened skin like a walnut flashes her a crooked smile. She glowers at him. 

“Keep close,” Rey tells BB-8. She adjusts her hood, keeping her gaze fixed on the ground. She’s not afraid of the rabble, but something tells her she’s better off keeping a low profile. She stole the _Millenium Falcon_ from Unkar Plutt, and he’ll have a bounty on her head.

When she lived here, locals didn’t bother her much; she had a reputation, and they steered clear. No one came within five feet of her staff if they could help it, but it’s been a long time since she’s shown her face in this corner of the galaxy. She is unrecognizable, no longer the gritty scavenger girl but a foreigner dressed all in white. Newcomers don’t know her, don’t know what she’s capable of. They haggle her and catcall as she passes, but she doesn’t rise to the bait. They take her for a weakling, a naive little girl. It’s a mistake, one that could be deadly if they aren’t careful. When she was sixteen, a foreign tradesdealer grabbed her ass. He earned himself a broken nose and four missing teeth. He was spitting up blood for days. 

“Rey?” 

She turns on her heel. A man, his face covered in cloth wrappings, catches her wrist. She wrenches it from his grasp. He laughs mirthlessly, removing his wrappings. His features are slim. Stubble lines his jaw. Behind the solemnity and wariness that clings to him, his cobalt eyes sparkle. 

“Di’van?” she asks. The name feels strange on her tongue. 

A memory jogs loose. A memory she’d shut away long ago. 

When she was eight, and scouring one of the crashed Star Destroyers in the graveyard, a boy caught a loose foothold and plummeted two hundred feet to this death. He was two years her senior. He screamed all the way down. 

Every bone in his body broke on impact. Other scavengers were already busy relieving him of his haul by the time Rey reached him. She’d watched a wizened old man pry a piece of scrap metal from the dead boy’s hands, another from his bag. Another quarter portion, another full belly. Never mind the broken boy lying there, in the sand. No time to feel sorry. His haul was good for something. Tears were not. 

Rey couldn’t stop looking at his eyes—the way they stared, unblinking. She’d burst into tears, and Di’van, who was fifteen at the time and wiser than his years, put a hand on her shoulder. 

“He’s gone,” Di’van said, gently. “There’s no point crying for the dead. We’ve got plenty to cry about already.” 

Despite his facade, the blood had drained from his face and it was a long time before he tore his gaze away from the boy’s face. 

Di’van helped Rey bury him. He shared his haul with her that day, an act of kindness almost unheard of on Jakku. 

They became reluctant allies, after that. Rey supposes, in different circumstances, they might’ve been friends. They grew apart as they got older and pickings got slimmer. 

Mostly, Rey kept to herself. The scavengers tolerated one another, but Rey knew they couldn’t be counted on or trusted; she learned that the hard way. Jakku was lawless, and there was no shortage of sand rats willing to stab you in the back to get their hands on some scrap metal, but he never forgot the kindness Di’van had shown her, and she never forgot the times, though they numbered very few, when she glimpsed bits and pieces of humanity under the hardened exteriors of the people on Jakku fighting to survive. 

“It’s been a long time,” Rey says, clasping his hand. 

He nods. 

“I thought you got off-world.” 

“I’ve got business to attend to.” 

“Looking for him?” 

He points, and Rey follows the line of his finger to the concession stand a few yards from where she stands. She spots Unkar Plutt arguing with a Cloddogran. The Blobfish, as Rey and the other scavengers not-so-affectionately called him, looks thinner. His skin is sickly and sallow and hangs loosely from his body. Rey finds some satisfaction in the fact that he looks a little worse off than when she left him.

“You shouldn’t have come back,” Di'van says. He squints, a half smile pulling at his lips. 

Rey nods. 

“I’ll keep that in mind.” 

She strides toward Plutt. Rage boils in her gut like burning liquor at the sight of him. She thinks of all the bruises he’d inflicted, all the portions he’d skimped on, all the times she’d gone to bed with an empty stomach, the twelve-odd years he’d made her life a living hell. She wants him dead.

She approaches Plutt and with one, swift kick, knocks him to the ground. He lands on his back, cursing in Huttese, and fixes his beady eyes on her. She draws her saber and ignites one of its ends, holding the blade an inch from his bloated nose, and his voice dies in his throat. She reads the fear in his eyes and savors it. Her fingers flex around the hilt of her weapon. 

He wouldn’t be missed. It would be so easy to end it, to separate his head from his shoulders and watch the life bleed from him. Decapitation would be too quick. She wants it to hurt. 

Rey hesitates. He is unarmed, he poses no threat. Killing him now would be an act of anger, an act of revenge. That is not the way of the Jedi. Rey thinks of the Palpatine blood running in her veins, the rage that bubbles so close to the surface.

She stamps down her rage, tapping into the light side of the Force to calm the roiling tides, separating her personal trauma from the task at hand. Drawing a shaky breath, lowering her weapon a fraction of an inch. She does not disengage it.

“If you try anything, I’ll kill you,” she warns. 

“Who are you?” Plutt barks, “What do you want?” 

She lifts her hood, and a flicker of recognition crosses his features. 

_“Scavenger girl_ ,” he spits. “You took something that belongs to me.” 

“It never belonged to you,” she says. 

_“Cheeskar goo,_ it was a mistake coming back here.” 

“We’ll see.” 

“What do you want?” 

“To ask you a question.” 

Unkar Plutt’s rodent eyes swivel to survey his surroundings, seeking an escape. 

“My parents sold me to you the day Ochi murdered them for withholding information about my whereabouts—” 

“Your parents were scum,” Unkar growls, “like you.” 

Rey presses the tip of her blade into his shoulder, and a horrible scream of pain erupts from his gaping mouth. The stench of burning flesh fills Rey’s nose. 

_“Schutta!”_ he curses, once words return to him. 

“Where are they buried?” Rey asks. “You must have some idea. You and I were there when Ochi left the planet." Rey leans down, puts her face so close to his she can smell the reek of his breath. When she speaks, her voice is barely more than a whisper, but there's something deadly in it and Plutt shrinks in fear. "They sold me to protect me from him. And then he slaughtered them."

“Release me!” 

“You’re in no position to make demands,” Rey warns, moving the blade so it hovers above his cheek. Unkar Plutt winces. “Answer my question and I’ll consider letting you live.”

“I don’t know.” 

Rey extends a hand, fingers curling, and pushes into his mind. She’s not keen to go rooting around in filth such as this, but she needs to know. She rifles through his memories, trying to dislodge the information. She comes up empty handed. 

“Foolish girl! _I don’t know!_ ” 

Rey withdraws from his mind with a frustrated, animalistic growl. With a swift, downward cut, she separates Plutt’s hand from his body. His blood-curdling shrieks fill the air, and he cradles the cauterized stump to his chest. 

“You’ll lose the other,” Rey threatens. “Where are they buried?” 

“I don’t know! I saw the ship take off a few klicks east! I don’t know, I don’t know!” He cries, tears cutting tracks in the layer of dirt and grime lining his wrinkled face. 

“The Kelvin Ravine . . .” Rey mumbles, lifting her eyes to the horizon.

“Near Tuanul. Please! It’s the truth.”

Rey disengages her saber. She departs without a word, turning her back on Unkar Plutt and his severed hand, leaving a crowd of wary onlookers in her wake. 

* * *

Rey travels to the Kelvin Ravine on an old landspeeder she’d stolen from an unwitting junk dealer. She pulls her cowl up to cover her mouth and nose and straps a pair of overlarge goggles over her eyes. When BB-8 secure in the storage hold, she kicks the speeder into gear and revs the engine, leaving Niima in a cloud of dust. 

She travels along Pilgrim’s Road toward Tuanul Village. The speeder is clunky and braces her legs on either side, trying to keep up a balancing act. A pattern of bruises form on her thighs. She passes a pair of Uthuthma and a herd of hapabores. BB-8 stares at the giant, grey beasts and whistles in distaste. 

She reaches Tuanul Village as the sun begins to set. She parks her speeder and walks into the village—what’s left of it, anyway. Her footsteps stir up little clouds of ash and dust as she walks. There’s no one. There hasn’t been anyone for a long time. With a trained eye, she recognizes evidence of scavenging, but she can’t imagine there had been much left to salvage. The whole village had burned down. What remains of the huts and small clay houses are scorched and covered in a layer of ash, beaten to pulp by the winds or warped by the sun and fallen into disrepair. It’s a ghost town. 

“Something awful happened here,” Rey tells BB-8. 

As Rey wanders through the village, screams echo in her ears. She’d heard rumors of the First Order’s attack and Lor San Tekka’s death, but nothing could have prepared her for the echoes of pain and violence that stain the ground she walks on. She feels it in the Force like a wound. It weeps for the devastating loss of life, and Rey listens to its lament. So much waste, so many lives cut short. . . and in the middle of it all, there’s the flash of a red lightsaber, a mask, a darkness. A shiver crawls up Rey’s spine. Kylo Ren ordered the attack. Kylo Ren killed these people, burned this village to the ground. Women and children, too. 

The sky darkens, turns black, as Rey is whisked into a memory. She glances down, and her hands, much too large, are shrouded in black leather. An old, wizened man kneels before her. She’s seeing out of Ben’s eyes. 

_“You cannot escape the truth that is your family,”_ Lor San Tekka says. 

A spike of fear, followed by anger, cuts deep into Kylo’s heart. His emotions run on the surface. They escape through the eyes. It’s why he wears the mask. Otherwise he wouldn’t be able to hide anything. At San Tekka’s words, Rey feels something come undone inside him. He keeps his past under lock and key, hidden it away even from himself, and to have it shoved in his face splinters the fragile walls he tries so hard to keep erect. He’s falling apart, held together by spit and duct tape. He grasps at the darkness in him, pulling it around him like a barrier between himself and the truth of San Tekka’s words. He runs straight to the dark because it is better than admitting to himself what he has become. 

Snoke’s voice whispers in Kylo’s ear. 

_Kill him._

Rey’s raises the red blade above her head. She brings it down, killing Lor San Tekka. The man’s body crumbles to the sand like a puppet with its strings cut. 

A female voice with a heavy, imperial accent. She inquires about the villagers. Again, Snoke’s voice whispers in his ear. 

She feels Kylo’s fear—fear ingrained in his basest instincts. He fears Snoke. He has been conditioned to associate Snoke’s voice with punishment and pain, through endless torture and manipulation, and the fear roots itself deep in Rey’s soul. 

_Kill them all._

Rey, as Kylo, repeats Snoke’s order, and if it weren’t for the voice modulator in his mask it would’ve been possible to hear his voice shake as he uttered the words. The scene fades. Tears stream down Rey’s cheeks as the memory’s grasp loosens. 

“He was Snoke’s slave,” she says, dropping to her knees. “He wasn’t . . . he didn’t . . . he didn’t kill out of malice. He killed because he’d been ordered to do so.” Rey wipes her eyes, stroking BB’s domed head. He whistles, attempting to console her. 

Kylo Ren was a prisoner. Palpatine was growing in his head like a tumor, whispering in his ear with a silver tongue, and he’d excised it. 

Pain blooms in her chest where the bond should be. Rey presses three digits over her sternum, trying to soothe it away. The darkness that surrounds this place weighs on her. She is a conduit and it seeps into her bloodstream like poison.

Kneeling on the ground, she closes her eyes and reaches inside herself, building up a wall to close herself off from the festering wound. When that’s done, it’s a little easier to walk among the dead without hearing their screams, without Palpatine whispering in her ear. 

She straightens, looking out across the desolate sand fields, feeling alone. A whisper on the wind teases her ears. She strains to listen, hooding her eyes, reaching into the Force. She feels the shape of it. It’s leading west. That’s where she’s supposed to go. 

She leaves Tuanal, using it as a vantage point and venturing into the desert on foot. She calls upon the Force and lets it guide her, trusting it to lead her to her parents’ final resting pace. BB-8 accompanies, struggling over the dunes. 

Rey summits the crest of the ravine and shades her eyes, surveying the valley. A village is nestled at the foot of the dunes. It could hardly be called a village, really, and she doubts the settlement even has a name or a place on the map. It’s more of an encampment—a few, small huts and tarps secured to poles, providing a scrap of protection from the sun. Sheets hanging from a closeline billow in the wind. A steel pecker bird circles overhead. A Nu-Cosian collects water from a rudimentary vaporator. The Force whispers in her ear. 

She enters the village, hand resting on the lightsaber at her hip. She wanders between the huts. A villager snaps at her in Huttese. The steel pecker bird shrieks, and the sound cuts through the air. 

Instinct draws her to the outskirts of the village, and she walks a quarter mile until she comes to a flat bed of sand at the foot of a formation of sediment. A knot forms in her throat.

This is where they’re buried. There’s no gravestone, no marker. Just sand and wind and sky. And bones. 

Rey stands on the gravesite, feeling as alone as ever. She kneels and removes her pack. She withdraws the Sith dagger from her pack. Everytime her skin comes in contact with the blade she can hear their screams. She feels the blade slipping through flesh. She feels them die.

With shaking fingers, she moves her palm over a patch of sand and a hole forms in the ground, sand pooling in it. Satisfied, she drops the dagger into the hole and covers it with a layer of sand. 

“There,” she says, looking at BB-8. “It can’t hurt anyone else.”

She straightens, a considerable weight lifting from her shoulders. One dagger laid to rest, one to go. A hand falls on her shoulder, and Rey jumps, reaching for her lightsaber. 

She relaxes when Ben’s eyes meet her own. His hand closes around her arm, thumbing the soft skin of her inner wrist where her pulse pushes against his fingers. They stand side by side, staring at the unmarked graves. A silence stretches between them. When Ben finally speaks, his voice is quiet and soft. 

“What was her name?” 

“Aza,” she tells him. 

“And your father?” 

“Ciar.” She draws a shaky breath. “Ciar Palpatine, and I’m . . ." she trails off, dragging her tongue across her chapped lips nervously. 

“Say it,” he urges. 

“I’m their daughter. She meets his eyes, golden in the sun. “I’m Rey Palpatine.” 

“You can’t run from it.” He squeezes her hand. “It’s who you are.” 

_You cannot deny the truth that is your family._

She lets go of Ben’s hand turns away, walking toward the village. 

By the time she finds a stone that’s large and flat enough, the sky is set aflame by the setting sun. She places the stone over the place where her parents are buried, side by side. With trembling fingers, she carves their names into the stone, wielding the Force like a chisel. 

Satisfied, she steps back and admires her handiwork. Ben wraps an arm around her and kisses the space between her eyes. She rests her head on his shoulder, gazing upon the grave as the sun sets over Jakku.


	13. The Armpit

The Lars homestead is full of ghosts. Rey treads lightly, careful not to disturb them. Luke’s presence permeates the air, and she sheds a few tears for her old master. She feels a hand on her shoulder and knows he’s with her. He’ll always be with her. As will Leia. 

And Ben, for better or worse. 

She lays the twin lightsabers in their final resting place beneath the sand and gloomily wonders if she is destined to live out her days wandering graveyards, haunted by ghosts, tying up the loose ends of legacy. 

She makes a home for herself in the old moisture farm. It’s old, dingy and full of dust bunnies and cobwebs and sand, but it’ll do.

She stretches out on the lumpy bed and stares into the fire she’d built, turning the dagger over in her hands. It’s rare, a standard blade, made of glistening, silver metal and a hilt curved like a bird’s talon. She runs her finger up the side of the blade and it slices a small cut in the pad of her thumb. She winces, watching droplets of blood smudge the swirls of her fingerprint. 

Why would a big-name metalsmith craft such a blade? Why was this the blade of choice for the assassin sent to murder the last Skywalker? Rey lays a hand on her belly, stormcloud thoughts bogging up in her mind. If it’s a Sith weapon, then remnants of Palpatine's cancerous legacy remain, and that thought is so foul she immediately pushes it away. But there are no ciphers, no cryptic message.

Palpatine is dead. She hacked off that limb, already. She’d died for the sin of her birth. She’d renounced that name. 

_You can’t deny the truth that is your family._

Rey rolls onto her side, watching the flames reflect in BB-8’s lens. He beeps, annoyed. He doesn’t like sand, doesn’t understand why Rey insists on living in dingy old settlements on scummy, lawless planets. 

“The droid’s right,” a voice interjects, behind her. Rey starts. 

“Kriffing hell!” she hisses, eyes locking on his face. Ben smirks, running a hand through his hair. She presses two fingers to her chest and attempts to slow her racing heart, turning her back on him. 

“I’m not talking to you,” she says. She’d given into the fantasy on Jakku, but she’s determined to nip it in the bud before the strings truly come undone in her brain. He’s not real, and she’s convinced the best way to exorcise the ghost is to avoid playing his games. 

“The silent treatment?” he asks, aghast. “That’s low. Even for you, _scavenger._ ” She can hear the smirk in his voice as he says the word. She resists the bait. 

“So, you’re calling yourself a Skywalker.” He sidles up to her and his face is so close that his breath stirs the stray wisps of hair around her face. She keeps her gaze fixated on the fire. 

“Does that make you my sister? Cousin, maybe? Or were you planning to take my hand in marriage?” 

“In your dreams, _flyboy_.” 

A smile finds its way onto his face. He presses his lips to the corner of her mouth, working down the column of her neck. Her cheeks pink. She doesn’t know why she lets him carry on like this. All she knows is it’s working. Her walls come down, and there’s a spark somewhere deep inside, and if he doesn't quit it's going to fan into flames.

This isn’t new. Even when they were standing on opposite sides of the war, she couldn’t ignore him, couldn’t resist his gravitational pull, couldn’t deny the _something_ between them. He’d hunted her, battered at the walls of her mind, and she couldn’t deny him. Every shred of practicality she possessed screamed at her to destroy this _thing_ , whatever it was, but something kept her rooted to him, attracted to him like a moth to light. And, no, the irony wasn’t lost on her. She knew what it was, and that was the worst part. The thing that keeps her rooted to him goes beyond the Dyad and destiny. It's primitive, biological. It is attraction of the simplest kind.

He pushes her up against the wall, hands splayed on either side of her head. Rey catches his bottom lip and he deepens the kiss, fingers working to loosen her tunic. He lowers his head, sucking a bruise onto the soft skin of her breast. She grinds her hips against him. It’s his turn to moan, eyes nearly rolling into the back of his head. 

“You’re a Solo, not a Skywalker,” he says, lifting his mouth to kiss her again, and the dulcet tones of his voice send tremors down her spine. “I would’ve made you a Solo. All you had to do was ask.” 

“That’s presumptuous,” she remarks. 

“You want me.” There’s fire in his eyes.

“Yes,” she admits, “but I can’t have you.” 

She plants a hand on his chest and wrestles from his grasp, turning her back on him, trying to harness the rapid beat of her heart, and when she risks a glance over her shoulder, he’s gone. She worries her lip, feeling something come loose inside her. 

* * *

Compared to Niima Outpost, Mos Eisley is a flourishing urban hub. Ships roar overhead, and domed, duracrete buildings stand in clusters or line the wide, dusty streets. Rey enters the spaceport with BB-8 in tow, pulling her hood lower over her face, reading the shifting tides of the Force and avoiding the eyes of passersby. A pair of stormtroopers armed with heavy blasters push through the crowd, evidence of the First Order’s death grip over the galaxy. 

“Wait here,” she tells BB-8, slipping through a dusty archway and entering Chalmun’s Cantina. It’s dimly lit, with a bar and a band and tables seating an array of gamblers, smugglers, bounty hunters and travelers, both foreign and native. The smell roasted Kowakian-spider monkey and cigarras makes Rey’s stomach turn. She’s been more sensitive to certain smells lately, with the pregnancy and all, and the stench of this place doesn’t help. 

Rey approaches the barkeep. An Advozse pushes past her, jostling her against broad back of a brutish, ranine alien with skin the color of rust and a number of orange, pustule-looking growths nestled in the hills and craters of his face. He curses in Huttese, and Rey mutters an apology. He belches, and a wave of nausea overtakes her as the scent of old food and something she can’t quite name fills her nostrils. She has half a mind to find the nearest bathroom and deposit her meager lunch of ration-pack polystarch into the toilet. 

She swallows her vomit and reaches the bar. She takes a seat, leaning her elbows on the countertop. She casts a glance over her shoulder, building up invisible walls to dissuade eavesdroppers. 

“I’m looking for Edris Gresher,” she says. The bartender, a greasy man with a bulbous nose, sneers. 

“I’ve hearda the name,” he says, idly, wiping the dirty counter with an even dirtier rag. 

“Do you know where I can find him?”

“I suppose,” he says. “You gonna order a drink?” 

“Fine,” Rey says, gritting her teeth. While he fixes her drink, she throws another, wary glance around the room. She spots Ben sitting at a table in the corner and double-takes, hands clenching into fists. His ungloved hands rest on the surface of the table, fingers drumming an irregular beat. His eyes fix on her. Dressed in a simple shirt and pants, blaster at his hip, he could be any no-name spacer waiting for a refuel. He could be Han Solo. Her heart crawls into her throat. She turns her back on him. 

“If I didn’t know any better, I woulda thought you’d seen a ghost,” the bartender remarks. Rey meets his gaze. He flashes her a smile, and Rey catches a glimpse of a gold tooth. 

“Something like that,” she says. She knots her fingers together. “So, Gresher? Any idea where he is?” 

“What d’ya want with him, girl?”

“None of your business, that’s what.” 

“Ah, well.” The bartender waves her off, sheepish. “You’ve got no business with him. He’s dangerous. Lotsa guys come in stickin their noses where they don’t belong. Lotsa guys lose their heads. I wouldn’t want a pretty girl like you losin’ her head. If I woulda told ya where he’s at and you lost your head, it would weigh on my conscience. He’s got lotsa guys lookin’ out for him. Hell, lotsa guys comin’ in here, startin’ trouble. I’d be careful, if I were you.” 

“Don’t worry about me,” Rey says impatiently. “I don’t want any trouble. I just want to know where he is.”

The bartender rubs his chin. He wipes his fingers on his apron and whistles, jabbing a finger at her midriff, eyeing the blaster clipped to her belt. 

“That’s a fine weapon,” the bartender says, clicking his tongue. “How many credits d’ya figure it’s worth?” 

Rey purses her lips. Out of patience, she passes hand over his ruddy face, and his eyes shift out of focus. 

“You will tell me where I can find Edris Gresher,” she says. 

“He doesn’t usually come in here, but I know a couple guys who’s seen ‘im at the Fierri Hobbs Cantina, just a few blocks south of here. He plays Sabacc, likes to gamble.” The bartender stares dazedly at her, rubbing his chin. “He mostly does business for syndicates in the Core Worlds, so he ain’t around much. He drops in every two weeks or so. If ya stick around long enough, you might catch him.”

“Thank you,” Rey gets to her feet. “You’ll speak of this to no one,” she says, imbuing her words with the Force, “and you’ll forget I was here.” 

She makes for the door, hood pulled low over her face, determinedly avoiding Ben’s gaze as his eyes burn holes into her back. She leaves her drink on the countertop untouched and the bartender staring open-mouthed after her as she slips out the door. 

* * *

Rey sits cross-legged on the floor, attempting to clean the grit out of BB-8’s mechanisms. He beeps indignantly.

“I’m sorry, I know it’s less than ideal—”

He emits a string of beeps and whistles like it’s a personal offense. 

“Watch the language!” Rey cries. The droid rolls forward, bumping against her knee. 

“Hold still!” she orders. She fishes a pilex driver out of her toolbox and pries away one of his spherical orange plates, attempting to scrape the sand out of the cracks with her fingernail. 

“This isn’t a permanent arrangement,” she tells him, and the words dry up in her mouth. “We won’t be here much longer.” 

Her attempts to pacify the little droid are growing more and more redundant with each passing day. BB-8 calls her bluff. For the past week, she’s frequented the Fierri Hobbs Cantina. She sits at a table in the back, a hole-in-the-wall as dangerous, perhaps more so, as Chalmun’s. She sits with her hood pulled low, among the cigarra smoke and criminals, eavesdropping on conversation and scenting the air for a whiff of the man she’s hunting. There’s been no sign of Edris Gresher, not a clue nor a hair, and the ghosts in this place are starting to weigh on her. 

“There, finished,” she says, replacing BB’s last panel. He makes three, experimental circles and beeps dejectedly, hanging in his head. Rey reaches out, stroking him absently.

“I know,” she soothes. She unfolds her legs and climbs to her feet 

“I’ll be right back.” 

She brushes past him, leaving the farm and approaching the _Falcon_. She lowers the ramp and climbs on board, heading for the cockpit. She’s been using the _Falcon_ ’s comm system to contact Finn with encrypted messages. She’s supposed to check in whenever she gets the chance, and she’s long overdue. Her stomach backflips unpleasantly. The last thing she wants is to worry him. 

When she reaches the doorway, she freezes. Ben’s standing in the cockpit, gripping the back of the pilot’s chair so tightly all the blood has long since drained from his knuckles. His head is bowed in silent reminiscence, and Rey’s stomach sinks. She resists the urge to turn on her heel and leave, having intruded on something very private. She has to remind herself that he’s just a figment of her imagination, something that’s becoming harder and harder to believe, as of late. He’s persistent, like the scum under her boot that’s hard to scrub off. 

“I haven’t been on this ship since I was a kid,” he says, not looking at her. “I must’ve been about nine or ten.”

He passes a hand over his chin absently and gestures to a large, orange button on the control panel. “When I was little I played with that button so much the plastic wore off. Dad had to get it replaced,” he chuckles, and the sound is alien. “I got in so much trouble.”

The ghost of a smile plays on his lips.

Rey sets her bag down with a dull _thud_ and steps forward, organs in her throat, hands shaking. She grips the back of the co-pilot’s chair and leans over the control panel, switching on the transceiver. It spits short bursts of static, and she takes a seat in the chair, fiddling with dials and controls to improve the connection. 

“You’re still not talking to me.” It’s not a question. 

Rey doesn’t respond, trying to keep the surface calm despite the fact that her heart’s beating much too fast. 

“I wanted to be a pilot. I used to think my dad was this hero, this _god . . ._ ” His voice trembles. “And then I got older, and he decided domestic life didn’t suit him and he went back to smuggling and whatever else, and I,” Ben shook his head. “I hated him for it.” 

Rey keeps her eyes fixed on the control panel, lips pressed in a thin line. Ben runs a finger along the fraying stitching in the worn leather chair cushion, eyes shining with tears. 

“I still loved him, though.”

“I know,” Rey says without looking at him, voice barely more than a whisper. Ben closes the space between them and takes her hands in both of his, and she’s powerless to resist. 

“She speaks,” he whispers, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, and Rey marvels at it, how freely he distributes it, how easy it is to read all the love in his eyes when Kylo Ren’s mask is stripped away. 

“Rey,” he implores, softly. “You don’t have to do this.”

“I do.” 

“You don’t.”

“I can’t live in my own silly world and ignore what’s right in front of me. I have to think about the future, about our family, _this_ family,” she takes his hand and places it on her belly. His hand is so large it all but swallows her up, but there’s a rightness to it. This is how it’s supposed to be. Her and him and their baby. They’re supposed to do this together. 

“I can’t keep shutting you out. It’s tearing me apart.”

Ben nods. 

“I know.” 

"I can’t keep living in this twisted fantasy.” 

“It’s not a fantasy. I’m here. I don’t know how, but I am.” 

“You’re not a ghost?” 

“Not exactly."

“You’re not alive, either.” 

“I don’t think so.” 

“I don’t understand.” 

“I think it’s a product of the Dyad. One can’t unite with the cosmic Force without the other, so I’m stuck . . . somewhere in between.”

“So, that’s it? Until I die . . . you’re stuck.” 

“Theoretically.” 

Rey draws a shuddering breath. She has a hard time believing the universe could be so wicked. She’s destined to live out a lifetime taunted by him, tied to him, until death reunites them.

“That’s cruel.” 

Ben nods, solemnly. 

“I wouldn’t have it any other way, if it means you get to live. If it means you get to be happy.”

“At what cost?” she cries, eyes filling with tears. “I’m not happy. I don’t think I’ll ever be happy.” _Without you_. She doesn’t say the last part out loud. She doesn’t want to inflate his ego any more than she already has. 

“You can, and you will.”

“I don’t understand,” she repeats dumbly. 

“We’re one soul in two bodies. That’s why I’m tethered to you. It’s why the Force keeps connecting us. Our souls will always attempt to reunite with one another.” 

Rey falls silent. He touches her face, tracing her cheekbone. His other hand trails the sweep of her collar bone. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. His voice is barely more than a whisper. “If I could take your pain away, I would.” 

Rey meets his eyes. 

“I wouldn’t ask you to.” 

Ben’s gaze finds her belly. Slowly, he pulls up her shirt, revealing the expanse of soft, freckled skin beneath, and drops to his knees. He plants a few, impossibly soft kisses over the place where their baby grows, and a swell of possessiveness rises in him. The bond between them sings. 

He leans his head against her abdomen, arms wrapping around her frame.

_Mine._

Her half of the bond joins his chorus. Her arms encircle his shoulders, fingers running through his hair. 

_Yours._

He straightens, and then he’s towering over her. His eyes meet hers, and he starts to say something but his words die in his throat when she seals her mouth to his. She can’t wait any longer. She’s been chasing the spark for so long, and when his teeth grazes her bottom lip it ignites, and then she’s fisting her hands in his sweater and he’s got her bent over the control panel of the _Falcon_ , kissing her like he intends to devour her, and she’s kissing him back. She kisses him so hard she bruises his lips, and there’s a lot of biting and growling involved, and she should be embarrassed but the sounds coming from his end only spur her on. He doesn’t love the Chandrilan princess or the Jedi warrior or even the Empress on the Dark Throne. He loves the Rey of Jakku, the gritty little sand queen, the lioness, the _scavenger_. 

Her back is shoved up against a thousand different buttons and switches. Alarms begin to blare and she tries to break the kiss, but he just knots his fingers in her hair and recaptures her lips. She gives in, letting him obliterate everything, floating on the crest of pleasure as his hands slide down her waist until their supporting her thighs, pushing against her. Her hand flies out as she attempts to steady herself, knees quivering and breath coming in shallow gasps. There are so many layers of fabric between them, and he’s already starting to come undone, and then the transceiver pings and Finn’s voice cuts through the static. 

“Rey?” 

Rey reaches unseeingly for the comm, trying to shut it off. Ben’s fumbling with her belt, and she uses her other hand to help him undo it. The damned comm pings again. 

“Wait,” she pants, placing a hand on Ben’s chest. His hands still at her waist, but he’s impatient—panting, color high in his cheeks, lips properly kissed, hair properly mussed. A rush of adoration sweeps over her. 

_Mine_. 

She is the angry little scavenger from Jakku, and she protects what’s hers. 

He lowers his lips to hers, but she clamps a hand over his mouth, suppressing her laughter as he groans a wordless plea. She locates the power button on the comm and switches it off, and when she turns her attention to Ben, he’s gone. She’s alone in the cockpit with a new, encrypted message from Finn blinking on the transceiver. 

* * *

She sits at a circular, wooden table in the back, fingers poised on the lacquered wood. The cantina is lit with burning lamps emitting dim, orange light. She watches the activity from afar—the gamblers with dice in hand, the foreigners from off-world looking for a place to blow off steam while they refuel. A Bith puffs on a cigar and a pair of Quarren, in the midst of a heated argument, throw a couple punches. She watches the skirmish with mild interest, keeping on the outskirts. Always watching, always waiting. 

She traces absentminded patterns in the dust coating the table, listening to the band strike up a tune that sounds awfully like a Rancor in heat. She fixes her gaze on the door, watching newcomers file in, scanning their faces and reading their signatures in the Force. This is routine; it has been nearly two weeks on this sand heap and Rey’s preparing to throw in the towel. There has been no sign of Edris Gresher. Not even a whisper. The trail’s gone cold, and she’s running out of options. Whoever he is, he’s hard to find. 

Meanwhile, whispers about the girl who lives in the old Lars homestead claiming to be a Skywalker travel like wildfire. Rey readjusts her hood. She can’t stay here much longer. She has to get off-world, preferably on a clean ship, before a shadow murders her in her sleep. 

She runs her fingernail up the grain in the wood, chin propped on her elbow, eyelids heavy. She didn’t get a wink of sleep last night, afraid to close her eyes for fear of reliving the same old nightmares. X-wings exploding into a billion bits and Ben’s body growing heavy in her arms, dragging her down. 

He hasn't made an appearance since he left her alone in the cockpit of the _Falcon_ and the pain in her chest, the broken bond's physical manifestation, won't leave her alone. Too often she wakes with her pillow soaked with tears and fear in her heart. She watches him die. Over and over and over again. She curses the gods, curses this cruel little game of trades, his life for hers. She can't afford to think like that, even when she knows it's the truth. They are star-crossed. In every sense. 

She pinches the skin of forearm, centering herself and reinforcing her walls. The creeping tendrils of anxiety abate, somewhat. 

_Focus_ , she tells herself, and the voice in her head sounds like Luke's. 

Outside, Tatooine’s twin suns are sinking. 

She returns to the homestead in the small hours of the morning, bags under her eyes, disheartened and empty handed. 

She falls asleep with a half-eaten loaf of polystarch crumbling in her hand. When she wakes, there’s a blanket draped over her body and a desert wildflower, its mauve petals in full bloom, lying on the bedside table. 


	14. The Assassin

Edris Gresher enters Fieri Hobbs with his hood pulled over his eyes, flanked by two companions. His hand rests on the heavy blaster clipped to his belt. He wears another strapped to his back. Each of his companions, too, are armed to the teeth, and a few patrons shift warily in their seats upon their arrival. The music falters, then resumes, as does the cacophony of conversation. Rey’s gaze tracks the newcomers. She licks her lips like a lioness detecting blood on the wind. 

The part of his Gresher’s face visible under his hood is marred by lumpy white scars, and his middle, ring, and pinky fingers, as well as a large portion of his hand, are cybernetic. His mechno fingers drum an irregular beat on the barrel of the blaster holstered at his hip. The prosthetic ends at his wrist, fused together with red, scarred skin that doesn't look fully healed. His forearms, exposed under the rolled-up, synthleather sleeves of his jacket, are tan and sun-spotted. 

Rey’s hand tightens around the hilt of her saber, breath snagging in her throat. She eyes his companions. The taller of the two’s exposed skin is covered in the blurred outlines of countless old tattoos. The shorter is a porcine Gamorrean with tough, green skin and upturned tusks, armed with a vibro-ax. In her head, she nicknames them Ink and Piggy. 

She watches with bated breath as the bartender greets Gresher and his companions, leading them toward the back of the cantina. The trio disappears around a corner. She rises in her chair and follows them, casting a shield around herself and diverting the attention of any onlookers. She ducks into the hallway and locates the door they disappeared into. It hangs ajar. She presses herself flat against the wall and peers through the crack.

Gresher sits at the head of a long table amongst several patrons, presumably members of his inner-circle. The room is dim, backlit by eerie, green hues. A service droid skirts the table with a tray laden with Tevraki whiskey and several glasses. He lights a cigarra, propping his foot up, and Rey watches him take a drag, gaze trained on the Toydarian at the other end of the table, dealing Sabacc hands. The door swings open, and with it, and Rey scrambles backward as the bartender appears in the doorway. He smells like Tabac and greasy food. His eyes narrow. 

“This is a private lounge, girl. Get lost!” 

“I was just looking for the refresher,” she says, hurriedly. The bartender curses in Huttese and points her toward a door farther down the hall. Rey locks herself in, going to the sink. She draws a shaky breath, staring into the grimy sink, splattered with something that looks like a congealed mixture of blood and urine and clumps of hair. Her stomach turns, and she leans forward and vomits the contents of her lunch into it. When she’s finished, she wipes her mouth on the back of her hand. The hazel eyes that stare out of the mirror on the wall are hard with resolve. 

All that’s left to do is watch. And wait. Once Gresher leaves, she’ll follow. 

_Follow a rat,_ Rey thinks, _and he’ll lead you to his hole._

* * *

Gresher is drunk. His bloodshot eyes slide over the lamplit street like cool mercury, and he sways on his feet. A thin Twi’lek with turquoise pigmentation accompanies him and his companions. They trade bits of slurred conversation in low voices as they stumble through the dark streets. 

Rey tails them with feather-light footsteps. It’s late, but stragglers of questionable integrity, mostly spiced-out junkies and vagabonds, remain. Rey disguises herself among them, keeping her head low and sticking to the shadows, lagging a considerable distance behind to avoid suspicion. She adds a limp to her gait for good measure. 

She follows Gresher and his goons into a back alley. Piggy lights a cigarra, and Rey’s close enough to hear the click of the igniter stick. She slows, falling behind as they round the corner and disappear through a doorway. She waits for the sound of their muffled footsteps to fade before she eases it open and steps inside. 

It opens to a darkened, closed-up tapcafe filled with tables, each adorned with a centerpiece of small, white flowers. The lingering smell of stale caf permeates the air. Blinds cover the windows, blocking out the light from the street. Rey squints, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness.The chairs are stacked against the wall, and the floor is swept, spotless. She locates another door with a strip of light filtering through the crack underneath and turns the knob. She slips through it, knuckles white on the hilt of her weapon. The door leads to a staircase. On the landing, Rey pauses, glancing around. It’s a narrow hallway with a low-ceiling. Rey guesses it’s an attic or a storage space of sorts. She approaches the door. 

She’d prefer to speak to Gresher alone, but she can deal with the Twi’lek, Piggy and Ink if she must. She has a creeping feeling he won’t be too pleased to find she’d tailed him and cornered him in his den, but she’ll cross that bridge when she comes to it. 

Rey presses her ear against the door and holds her breath, straining to listen. Gresher’s behind that door, but it’s quiet, _too_ quiet. An eerie, deathly silence settles over the landing. Something is very, horribly wrong. 

_“She’s outside,”_ an unfamiliar, cold voice warns, and a cold fist closes around Rey’s heart. The voice isn’t muffled, or faraway. It’s whispering in her ear. 

Rey bursts through the door and ignites the lightsaber’s double blades, charging forward, every cell in her body poised to attack. She freezes in her tracks, however, at the sight that greets her. 

Gresher and his companions, reduced to corpses, litter the floor. Rey drops to her knees beside Gresher, deactivating the saber. Blood drips from the corner of his mouth. A red gash stretches across his abdomen, and underneath the torn fabric and the blood soaking through it, she can see the slippery, lilac tissue of his intestines. Rey clamps a hand over her mouth, unable to tear her eyes from the wound. 

The thrum of a vibroblade fills her ears, and Rey jumps to her feet, saber igniting. Her brilliant, yellow blades flash in the blue eyes of the man emerging from the shadows. 

Gresher’s killer lunges, and she parries, bringing her lightstaff around to take a swipe at his head. He ducks, and her blade grazes his shoulder. He hisses in pain, and she catches a flash of blue eyes under his hood. Rey swings her blade, aiming for the kneecaps, and he knocks her blade aside. He’s bigger and stronger, but he’s disadvantaged—as far as she can tell, he isn’t Force sensitive, and his blade is shorter than her lightstaff, forcing him to get within closer range of her weapon. She’s quicker and lighter, and she’s had plenty of opportunities to hone her abilities against displays of brute strength. 

She bares her teeth, a battle cry bursting from her throat. He lunges and she dodges, and it becomes a dance. Her blade slices a smoldering gash in his upper thigh. His blade grazes her bicep. She shifts her weight to her off-side and brings the lightsaber down. The edge of her lightstaff catches his hand, severing the tip of his pinky finger. He screams. 

Rey Force-pushes him against the wall. His back slams into a case Gresher’s wares, sporting row upon row of blasters and heavy weaponry. The vibroblade clatters to the floor. 

Rey holds her blade against his neck, sweat dripping into her eyes. Red laces her vision. 

_“Who are you?”_ She growls. 

He’s human, middle-aged with sandy hair and a pale, watery gaze. He flashes a crooked smile. 

“Jedi _scum_.” He spits in her face. Rey’s fingers curl. His hands fly to his throat, eyes bulging out of his head as she crushes his windpipe. 

“Who sent you?” 

She was so close, _so close_. and now Gresher’s intestines are spilling onto the dusty, wooden floor. 

He claws at the invisible hand around his throat and gasps when she releases him, drawing lungfuls of air.

"You'll die. First Luke, then you, and the child in your womb. You'll die, and the Jedi will die with you."

_It’s time for the Jedi to end . . ._

“Kill me,” he chokes. He wipes his lips and lifts his eyes, holding her gaze. _“Do it."_

His words die in his throat as Rey’s blade plunges into his chest. Blood-laced spittle bubbles in the corner of his mouth. He slumps against the plasma blade, gasping. He holds her gaze, a sick smile contorting his features. 

“I . . . didn’t think . . . you had the guts,” he pants. “I’ve heard rumors . . . Jedi are supposed to be saints.” He laughs, and a bit of blood dribbles down his chin. “You’re no Jedi. You’re a killer.” 

Rey disengages the saber. The man’s knees buckle and he pitches forward, sprawling onto the ground. Her blood solidifies. Palpatine's laughter rings in her ears. Black spots swim in her line of vision. She stumbles, knees hitting the floor. Rey blinks, trying to reconcile the double-images flashing across her vision into singulars. 

A faint, gurgling sound builds in the back of the assassin’s body. She crawls on her hands and knees until she reaches his side. He rolls onto his side and coughs, and blood splatters the wooden floorboards.

“Hold still.” 

“No,” he coughs, “let me die." 

She ignores him, clamping a hand over the wound. His body shudders. A damaged skin around the wound pulls taut and a new layer of skin begins to form. Rey slumps forward, bright spots exploding behind her eyes as the energy drains from her. A last, thrumming pulse runs through her body as the Force’s energy wears away. It stopped the bleeding, but there’s internal damage that will kill him. It's only a matter of time. It won’t keep him alive, but it'll buy her a few minutes, and if she’s lucky, a one-way ticket into the belly of the beast. 

“Who sent you?” she asks, fighting through the fog of exhaustion clinging to her body and mind. 

“The Empress . . .” he says, eyelids fluttering.

_Empress Palpatine . . ._

Rey bites her lip, pushing the thought from her mind. He’s delirious, and afraid. She feels the fear pouring off him like a sickly scent, despite his attempt to hide it. Good. A man fighting for his life will make sacrifices if it means he gets to keep it. 

"The Empress?" She echoes. 

His arm swings out spasmodically, fingernails grazing her leg, and Rey can only assume it’s a knee-jerk reaction, residual effects of the fight-or-flight response and adrenaline in his veins. Nonetheless, Rey raises her lightsaber, holding the blade inches from his face.

“If you try anything, I will kill you.” 

“I’m . . . already dead,” he gasps, with a sick smile. An ashy pallor clings to his skin. His lips are blue. 

“Who sent you?" 

He shakes his head. He covers his mouth with his hand as another cough shudders through his body, and when his hand comes away it’s slick with blood. 

“Why are you here?” 

“Sent to . . . gather intelligence . . . on criminal activity in Outer Rim Territories. The Empress . . . she’s been looking for you. We received word . . . of your whereabouts . . . so, I followed you . . . ordered to kill . . .”

“You were ordered to kill me,” Rey interjects, quietly. 

The assassin nods. 

“Why?” 

“To kill the child you carry.” He lifts a bloodied hand, pointing at her navel. His fingers tremble. “The Empress is wise. She has seen what he will become. He will bring death and destruction and chaos . . . he must die.” 

Rey’s blood thickens in her veins. 

“Why did you kill them?” she gestures to the bodies. 

“Edris Gresher is a traitor and a criminal . . . an enemy . . . When I heard you were looking for him . . . I proposed a deal with potential buyer.” He gestures to the Twi’lek, eyes flashing. Rey’s eyes rove over the bodies. The blaster bolt in the Twi’lek’s chest. Beautiful, turquoise skin puckered and burnt around the entry wound. 

“It was a set-up,” she echoes. He laughs, but the chortle quickly morphs into a bout of coughing. Blood coats his lips. He gazes at her through glossy eyes. When he speaks again, his voice is barely more than a whisper. 

“Two birds,” he says, simply. Tear-tracks cut through the lines in his face. 

“—one stone,” Rey finishes, with a frown. 

“I guess I was . . . foolish enough to think I could kill you . . . I thought if I caught you off-guard . . . I could put a blaster bolt through your brain. I was wrong.” 

“You could’ve,” she said, brows furrowing. "You had time. You’ve had plenty of opportunities. I’m alone. If you’ve been following me like you say, you could’ve put an end to it. Why didn’t you?”

He chooses his next words carefully. 

“I wanted to see if Jedi really are made of stone, or if they’re flesh and bone like the rest of us.” He wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. He speaks in short bursts, laboring over his words. 

“I wanted to see who you really are.”

Rey meets his eyes. 

“Who am I?”

The assassin smiles crookedly. 

“We’ll see.” 

“I don’t even know who I am,” Rey says. “I died and I came back, but I don’t think I made it out in one piece. I think a part of me is still dead.” 

“You lost . . . someone.” It’s not a question. 

“You were ordered to kill me,” Rey returns. “You disobeyed those orders.”

“I am not a servant, nor a slave. Jedi serve . . . masters, as do the Sith. The Empress . . . the Empress believes the path to peace begins where those orders end. The order dies when its traditions die. Only I can . . . make my choices. Only I can decide what I believe.” 

Rey meets his eyes 

“What do you believe?” 

“The war between light and . . . darkness has brought death and despair to . . . millions of innocents across the galaxy. I do not pretend that the Jedi are faultless , but I do believe it is unfair to punish one person for the actions of many.

“My master has made you out to be nothing but the . . . the bottom-feeding spawn of . . . hypocritical sycophants and sanctimonious extremists. I wanted to make that judgment for myself. There are other . . . reasons, too. I believe it is wrong to . . . to take a life before it has begun. That is not blood I want on my hands.” 

The assassin licks his lips nervously. 

“I try not to put much stock in visions.” 

“You think the Jedi are to blame for the state of affairs in the galaxy. Not the Empire? The First Order? Not the monsters and leeches sucking the lifeblood from innocents to secure their power?” 

“The Republic, too,” he counters. “The Republic and its allies . . . are not blameless. Like . . . like the Jedi, they have made many mistakes, and not without consequence.” 

_The legacy of the Jedi is failure. Hypocrisy, hubris . . ._

“True,” Rey says, “but there is grace in their failure.” 

“Maybe.”

A silence stretches between them, punctuated only by the whistle of his breath in his throat. 

“Was it worth it?” she asks. “Sparing my life?” 

“Only time will tell.”

“What if I kill you?” Rey asks.

“Then the Jedi really are gone.”

“And if I let you live?”

“Some things . . . some things are larger than life and death. I see it in your eyes. You know it’s the truth.” 

She can’t bring herself to meet his eyes. 

“I have to protect my family.” 

“I know.” 

Rey climbs to her feet. 

“Stand up,” she orders. She hooks her arms under his elbows and hikes him to his feet. She removes the blaster from the holster at her hip and presses the barrel against his skull. 

“Take me to your ship.” 

“Just kill me,” he pants. 

“Next time, I won’t ask nicely,” she warns, fighting to keep her voice steady. 

“Kill me!” he shouts, so loudly Rey backs up a pace. “It would be mercy.” 

“It’s mercy I can’t afford.” 

He holds her gaze. They size each other up. Rey’s mind races, weighing her options. If he refuses, there’s nothing left to do but pull the trigger. Then what? She’s back where she begun. If she pulls the trigger, she finishes the job for him. He’s right. She cannot kill him after he spared her life. If she strikes him down now, it will have been in anger, not defense. She cannot kill him without killing the light. 

When she speaks again, her voice is low, measured. Dangerous. 

“Take me to your ship.” 

* * *

It’s slow-going. They wind through the dusty, shadowed streets. The assassin clings to a thread. He sways on his feet, and a dark stain spreads over the fabric of his shirt where the exertion is aggravating the partially-healed saber wound. When he loses his footing and collapses in the sand, blood dripping from his lips, Rey holsters her blaster.

“Sit down,” she orders, catching his arm and easing him onto the ground with his back against a wall. She kneels beside him and presses her palm over the wound in his chest, repairing the skin and tissue beneath, erasing the damage she caused. When it’s done, she sits back on her heels. 

Fatigue weaves its way into her muscles and fogs her mind. There’s an ache deep in her chest. She can feel it’s ragged edges as keenly as if she were the one with the lightsaber in her chest. Whether it’s the residual effects of the broken bond or if it’s the absence of the life force she transferred into him, she doesn’t know. 

The assassin trains his gaze on her face, a sheen of sweat clinging to his forehead. Rey’s eyes drop to the ground. She climbs to her feet, brushing the sand from the seat of her pants. 

“I don’t know your name,” she says, brows furrowing. 

“Elijah Adler,” he says. He sticks out a hand. The corner of Rey’s mouth twitches. She takes it. 

“Rey Solo.” 

* * *

After a small eternity, they reach the hangar. 

Elijah leads her to a large, sleek shuttle the color of onyx. He gestures to the ship. 

“I’ve held up my end of the deal. Your turn.” His eyes flash, flicking from her face to the blaster in her hand and back. “Shoot me.” 

“We’re not done yet,” she says, gesturing to the ship. “Lower the ramp.”

Elijah lowers the boarding ramp. The hinges groan as the ramp descends from the belly of the ship and hits the dusty floor of the hangar. He starts up the ramp with Rey in tow. 

He stumbles, sways, and drops to his knees. 

She lowers her blaster and helps him to his feet, following him onto the shuttle with blaster in hand, anticipating fire from his crewmates once they realize he’s been compromised, but there’s no crew to speak of. 

“You came here alone?” Rey asks, lowering her weapon after a moment of hesitation.

“Yes. Knights of the Six work alone . . . always.” 

He limps into the cockpit. Rey follows. 

“The Six?” 

“The Six Points. A political organization led by the Empress. In the aftermath of the war, it is critical that we lay the foundations for lasting peace, something the New Republic, in its height, failed to achieve. We shall restore peace, and if that requires the fall of the Jedi _and_ the Sith, so be it. If it requires the collapse of the First Order _and_ the New Republic, so be it." 

Still pointing the blaster at his head, Rey leans over the control panel. With efficient fingers, she logs into the shuttle’s databank and begins to sift through it. It’s all encoded, but there’s a goldmine of intelligence—transponder codes, transcripts, and navigational charts, essential pieces of the puzzle she’s trying to put together. Nevermind her personal stake in this mission, if these radicals are really a threat to the New Republic, the Counsel (more specifically Poe, the only person besides Finn she trusts in this whole mess) ought to know about it. 

“It’s time for a new era,” he says. He clutches the back of the pilot’s chair for balance. “It’s time for a new order to rise.”

“In order to lay those foundations, you’re prepared to murder an unborn child under the pretense of some political extremist’s fever dream,” Rey says, through gritted teeth. “You cannot justify such an act.” 

“I’ve already admitted that I had . . . _reservations_ about the mission,” Elijah says, quickly. 

“Yet, here you are.” 

“Here I am,” he echoes, solemnly. “You are still alive and your child is unscathed. Surely that counts for something.”

“I suppose I should be thanking you?” Rey snaps, rolling her eyes.

Elijah is silent. His knuckles are white against the synthleather. Rey sneers. “Maybe you’re the sanctimonious asshole in this equation, not me.”

“We would get along, you and I. If circumstances were different.” 

“You think?”

“Your heart’s in the right place.” 

_“Thank gods,"_ Rey snaps, rolling her eyes. 

Elijah’s eyes flit over her face. A silence stretches between them. Rey weighs her options, deciding her course of action. She needs to transfer the ship’s data to the Counsel. She needs to find the Empress and kill her before it’s too late. She needs to decide what in the Core Worlds she should do with Elijah Adler. She can’t kill him. He can’t, or _won’t_ , kill her. They’re at an impasse, and his blue eyes bore into her, cutting to the bone. 

“Take me to the Empress,” she demands, thumbing the safety on her blaster. 

He laughs. “That’s a death sentence.”

“I can handle myself.” 

“I think you’ve got the wrong impression. I’m not your tour guide. If you think I would willingly jeopardize—”

“—they’re going to keep trying,” Rey interjects.

"What?"

She lifts the hem of her tunic, revealing the puckered, white scar just a few inches left of her belly button.

"With or without you. Your allies, the _knights of the Six_ , whatever,” Rey begins, thumb trailing across her waistline. “They tried to kill my son. They very nearly succeeded. And they will keep trying to kill him if I don’t stop them. If they succeed, innocent blood _will_ be on your hands.” 

“The Empress—”

“—you don’t serve a master. You said so yourself.” 

Blue meets hazel. She tries to read them, but they give nothing away.

“I don’t want to kill you, but I will. I’ll take your ship and I’ll fly there, myself." Rey sighs, lowering her blaster. "You're right. I'm no Jedi. I love too much, too deeply, and that means that I protect the ones I love. I _kill_ for the ones I love. Maybe it's a sin. Maybe . . . " she shakes her head, resting a hand over her belly. "Maybe it's weakness."

She meets his eyes. 

"I need to protect my family. Help me protect my family.”

He weighs his options, calculating. After a while, he shrugs. 

Rey steps aside to allow him access to the ship’s controls. She watches as his fingers move over the console with deft efficiency. 

“Strap in,” he says.

His fingers maneuver over the control panel with methodical efficiency. The engine rumbles to life. Once they’re clear of the hangar, Elijah begins priming the hyperdrive.

“Where’s your base?” Rey asks, watching Mos Eisley’s domed buildings shrink into pinpricks as they gain altitude. 

“Vandor,” Elijah says. The corners of his mouth tilt upward. “I hope you brought a jacket.” 

He logs the coordinates. When the hyperdrive is primed, he punches it, and Rey grips the arms of her chair, watching Tatooine dissolve into a smear of gold and brown outside the viewport as the shuttle buoys them into deep space. 


	15. The Crash

This is a very stupid idea. Rey hadn’t considered the possibility that Elijah is leading her straight into a trap. She’s been acting first, thinking second more often than not lately and she reminds herself to do some serious soul-searching on that front. 

_You’re not being careful._

_You’re not thinking. You’re not here._

Finn’s voice echoes in her ears over the roar of the engine and the rhythmic beeping of an unread message on the shuttle’s transceiver that’s getting on her nerves. 

Impulsivity. Recklessness. Passion. These are all trademarks of a dark side Force-user, and a stupid one at that. _Impulsive, reckless, passionate_. These are all things that she is, despite every attempt to cut out that part of herself. In her head, it's like a tumor, and every day it's growing, morphing, festering into some monstrous thing that tangles with her arteries and attaches itself to her vital organs. Every day she lets it stay, it gets harder and harder to remove. 

She thinks of Ben. When he wasn’t decimating consoles and committing patricide, he was quite reasonable. In all the ways she hadn’t expected. Even more than she. He’d met all her snide remarks and bared teeth with patience and logic. He’d met her calamity with calm. He was a walking contradiction, capable of compassion in the same space of breath as an insult. He is everything she is and everything she is not. He is her darkness as much as he is her light, and she can’t stop needing him. 

He would tell her to pull herself together. He would tell her to pick herself up off the ground and fight. 

She can hear his voice, and the familiar, rumbling cadence settles in her bloodstream. A morphine drip. A balm to her wounds. 

_For your son._

She promised him she would and she intends to keep that promise, and that’s a good enough straw to grasp at while she tries to reason out why she’s sitting in the cockpit of an enemy ship, betting her life on an assassin who’d tried to kill her no less than four hours ago. 

She thanks the stars that Threepio isn’t here to tell her the odds of her sudden and unfortunate demise at the hands of the enemy. She's certain the number would be high. Very high. 

She tells herself that if things hadn’t gone the way they had, she’d be back at square one, and she can’t keep carving out a half-life on sandy shitholes like Tatooine when she’s got a legacy to uphold, a Jedi Order to rebuild, and a child on the way. Not when there are shadows in the dark baying for her blood. 

The shuttle shudders as it drops out of hyperspace in the Sloo sector. Rey risks a glance at Elijah as he double-checks a navigational chart. Vandor is a prick of green light on the star map. It’s still forty standard minutes away. 

“Vandor,” Rey says. “What’s it like?” 

“Cold.” 

“Cold,” she echoes, cocking an eyebrow. 

Elijah frowns. 

“Cold and mountainous. It’s a Mid Rim territory. When the Empire rose to power—”

The shuttle’s sensors bleat a proximity alert. Rey jumps to her feet. Three starfighters show up on the scanners, forming a blockade. 

_“Kriffing hell,”_ she mutters, sifting through the data on the scanners. It takes her brain a second too long to process what’s going on, and by then, it’s too late. 

By then, there’s a blaster aimed at her head and a finger on the trigger. Rey freezes. 

“I’m sorry," Elijah says, eyes soft despite the tightness of his mouth, hands trembling despite the hard set of his shoulder.

"Elijah, please."

“I didn’t want to have to do this,” he says, voice strained, “but I don’t have a choice."

“You do,” Rey says, managing to keep her voice steady despite the frantic beating of her heart. 

“You’re willing to die for the ones you love. That’s admirable. You’re not who I thought you were, Rey Solo. You’re not a saint. You’re human. You’re protecting your future, I’m protecting mine. We’re not that different, you and I.” 

“Don’t do this.” 

“It’s already done.” 

He pulls the trigger. 

Rey raises a hand, stopping the bolt in its trajectory. The beam of light freezes in midair, erratic and wavering with unreleased energy. With a swipe of her hand, she shoves Elijah backwards. His head hits the wall with a nasty _crack_ and he slumps to the floor, unconscious. The blaster clatters to the ground, and Rey coaxes it into her hand with a jerk of her wrist. The ship shudders as another shot hits home.

“Kriff!” Rey swears. _“Kriff kriff kriff kriff kriff!”_

She steps over Elijah’s inert body and seizes the yoke, taking over the shuttle’s controls and activating its shields. She punches the thrusters and pulling the shuttle into a dizzying nosedive. The ship shudders violently and Rey loses her foothold, lurching forward. She slams against the control panel. Alarms begin to blare. She’s taking fire. 

She lets out a string of curses that would've made Unkar Plutt blush. It’ll be twenty minutes before the hyperdrive is functional, leaving her with no chance of escape. Without a crew to man the weapons systems, she’ll have to rely on defensive flying.

Rey pulls out of the dive and leveling out. The fighters follow suit, traveling in a tight V-formation. They break off, and two flank her, trying to circle the shuttle and cut if off. She makes a one-eighty turn, trying to throw them off her tail like a happabore shaking off biting flies, but they’re anticipating her every move and a shrill alarm pierces her ears as another shot finds its mark. Lights flash, and she hears the telltale hiss of gas escaping from a burst pipe. She dives, pulling off a full belly roll to avoid a hail of gunfire. Dizzying g-forces overtake her, and Rey struggles to keep down her lunch, eyeballs rolling in their sockets like cartoon characters in animated holovids. She clings to the yoke for dear life. 

A flash of orange light obscures the viewport as two of the starfighters collide with one another and explode. Debris flies in every direction, and Rey veers to the right to avoid the tongues of flame spewing from the explosion, fed by combusting fuel. 

There’s one fighter left. He’s persistent, matching her maneuvers with speed and precision. She zig-zags, dips, turns, flies belly-up, anything to confuse his tracking. She’s no Poe Dameron, but she makes do. She’s faster, but not by much. While she pilots the shuttle, her fingers flick over the navigational charts, scanning for the nearest inhabitable planet. There's a small, unnamed moon up ahead. She heads in that direction, and the shuttle eats up the vast expanse of black space as it closes the distance between her and the speck in the distance. The ship trembles as another shot grazes its armored hull. Rey’s organs are in her mouth. The moon looms in sight, surface marbled with gray oceans and greenery. 

She enters the moon’s atmosphere at full speed. The thrusters begin to cough and sputter. The fighter, still in pursuit, unloads its entire arsenal. The ship jolts, and Rey is thrown from her chair. She hits the wall, and pain explodes in her shoulder. Wavy, black lines swim across her vision and her breath snags. The lights flicker and die as the engine cuts out, and the ship falls, pulled at breakneck speed towards the ground by the moon’s gravitational pull. Rey’s fingernails scrabble across the tile for purchase, and she slides across the floor as the ship tilts. She braces herself against the wall, head spinning. 

The unmistakable scent of fuel leakage fills her nostrils. The ship is on fire. Smoke fills her lungs and scalds her throat. An oxygen mask dangles from the compartment above, and Rey reaches for it. She’s so close, _so close_ but she can’t reach it. In a few moments, the shuttle will crash. She’ll die, and it’ll be over. She stretches her fingers toward the mask. Some irrational part of her brain is screaming at her. If she could just reach the mask . . . 

_Rey!_ Ben screams, and his voice is in her ears and in her mind and everywhere at once. There’s no missing the desperation in it, the terror. 

_Ben?_

The terrible shriek of tearing metal rings in her ears as the side of the shuttle is ripped away. The floor gives way beneath her, and then she’s falling. 

* * *

She’s standing waist-deep in a field of grass and wildflowers. She brushes her fingers against the petals of a purple flower, and the moment her skin comes into contact with it, it withers and dies. Rey snatches her hand away, raising her eyes toward the sky as the light fades and daylight bleeds to darkness. The surrounding meadows begins to die, and the plants, once lush and strewn with budding flowers turn yellow and and brittle. The sky opens up, and torrents of rain fall to the earth. The rain scalds her skin and horrible, open sores break over her exposed arms. She shields her face and runs, wildly and without direction, dead plants crunching under her boots. The rain abates as suddenly as it came, and the dead plant matter gives way to stone, and Rey finds herself in a courtyard surrounded by ancient buildings and a pyramid-like temple overtaken with vines and reclaimed by nature. Two statues gaurd the entrance. 

“The Son,” she whispers to herself, approaching one of the statues. She’d read about the Ones in the few portions of the Jedi Texts she’d been able to decipher. 

Ben appears at her side. 

“—and the Daughter,” Ben finishes. 

“Mortis,” Rey breathes. “It’s beautiful.” 

“You’ve seen it?” 

“In dreams,” she tells him, holding his gaze. 

“Am I dead?” 

“No.” 

“Is this a dream?”

Ben’s mouth twitches. He catches her hands in both of his. Her question remains unanswered.

He points to the entrance of the temple. 

“You must go alone.”

Rey opens her mouth to protest, but the words die in her throat as his thumb ghosts her cheekbone. 

“I’ll be with you,” he assures her. Rey nods. He disappears; where the warmth of his fingers rested in the spaces between her own, there is nothing.

Rey ventures into the temple. She steps through the great, stone archway and the scene dissolves into blackness. It’s like stepping into a void. Rey’s eyes strain against the absence of light. White mists curl around her, and a chorus faint whispers echo a thousandfold until it sounds like a singular voice, calling to her in a voice to distant or ancient to understand. She’s surrounded by doors—some of them are literal, physical doors, and some are geometric, mandala-like portals, pulsing with light.

 _Synapses,_ she thinks, they look like synapses and neurons, a nexus, connecting a communicative network that spans infinitely. She’s confronted by the horrifying truth of her own insignificance at the time she realizes, with inexplicable certainty, that she, too, is an essential link in this chain. Everything that has happened and everything that will happen, everything that has been and everything that will be, leads here. 

Rey walks toward the nearest portal, reaches to touch it. A hand reaches through the mist, its fingertips brushing her own, and a jolt of electricity runs through her. The portal disappears, and Rey is suddenly falling very far and very fast through empty space. Her eyes fly open as her back hits solid ground and the air leaves her lungs. 

She’s lying in a dark, featureless room. There’s no windows, no doors, only large bacta tank standing in the middle of the room, hooked up to a fixture of wires. She climbs to her feet. A man is floating in it, face obscured by a clunky breathing apparatus, but she’s seen his body—his beautiful, pale skin with its knots and constellations of freckles, the coils of muscle, the patchwork of scars—in enough dreams to recognize it’s Ben. 

The Force is subdued and aching, here, like it’s wounded. She feels sick. It presses on her, swallowing her up. 

Ben’s head bobs in the syrupy sludge, and his eyes dart to and fro beneath his eyelids, like he’s waking from a dream. Rey approaches the glass, His eyelids dart faster as she draws nearer. His fingers flex at his side, as if he means to reach out for her. He senses her. 

He lifts his arm, slowly, like it takes a great amount of effort to do so, and presses his hand flat against the inside of the tank. She puts her hand up to his, lining up her fingertips to mirror his own, flat against the surface of the glass.

 _Rey._ She hears it in her mind as clearly as if he’d spoken it aloud. 

“Ben,” she whispers. 

The Force is oppressive and dark, and the air grows cold. A shiver crawls up Rey’s spine. The connector supplying oxygen to the mask on Ben’s face snaps, and Ben’s head jerks. His hand fumbles with the apparatus, and Rey watches, horrified, as he drowns.

“Ben!” she screams, pounding on the glass. Rey feels him fading, slipping away like sand through the cracks in her fingers. His body jerks once, twice, then stills.

“No! Ben!” 

He’s gone. Rey slumps against the tank, cradling her hands, bruised and bleeding, against her chest. 

Something shifts in the Force, like a blade cutting through microsutures, reopening old scar tissue. Something _thunks_ against the tank, and Rey lifts her eyes to find Ben’s eyes staring into hers, but it’s not him. Where his eyes were once emotive and deep as oceans, full of warmth, there are dark and unyielding as stone.

He strikes the glass with a closed fist. His fingers, once flesh and bone, are cybernetic. Rey gasps, scrambling backward. She searches his face, but it’s nothing but a mask. His fingers flex and curl, and an invisible fist closes around her windpipe. 

Rey falls to her knees, clawing at her throat. Fireworks erupt behind her eyelids. She gasps, searching for air, but his grip on her throat is too strong. Her vision dims. Through the haze, she watches a spider web of thin cracks spread across the glass, spanning from the tips of his fingers. The glass shatters, and Rey is whisked from the room and plunged headfirst into water. 

She kicks furiously, her clothes dragging her down. She tries to scream, panic tightening her belly, and a stream of bubbles emit from her mouth and nose. She fights toward the surface, inhaling lungfuls of air as her head breaks through the surface, and the scent of mildew and sea salt stings her nostrils. She knows this place. She’s in the cave underneath Ahch-To. 

Rey paddles toward the stalagmite shelf, panting with the effort. The water on Jakku, or absolute lack thereof, never lent itself to opportunities for effective swimming lessons. She reaches the shelf and hikes herself up, collapsing onto the stone. Water laps up against the stone outcropping where she lies. Groaning, she rolls onto her side and props herself up. She climbs to her feet and approaches the mirror. 

A thousand voices whisper in her ears. It’s an ancient song, one she’s heard before. A shadowy figure appears in the mirror, hidden by opaque mists. The silhouette grows larger as it approaches the glass. Before she can make out who it is, the glass shatters. 

The ground gives way beneath Rey’s feet, and the sickening feeling of falling from a great height overtakes her again before her back slams into the ground. 

Rey wakes with a gasp to the sound of waves crashing and the light of the sun, white-hot and blinding. 


	16. The Rescue

She’s lying flat on her back in wet sand. Water laps around her legs. She attempts to push herself up, fingers digging into the soft, malleable grains beneath her. A wave of nausea sweeps over her, and she leans forward just in time to avoid spilling the contents of her lunch down her front. She vomits her guts onto the sand and sits backs, sucking in great breaths of salty air. The world is moving in slow circles around her, and her heartbeat pounds in her head. She might’ve sustained a head injury.

How long has she been here? It could be hours, days, or mere seconds. She wouldn’t know the difference. She struggles to piece together her scattered thoughts into a coherent whole, but the events leading up to her current situation are discordant and fuzzy. 

The chase, the crash, the wall of shuttle torn away, Ben’s voice in her head, and the dream she’d had—Mortis, the Dark Mirror, Ben’s mechno hand against the surface of the bacta tank, the shattering glass—she tries to make sense of everything, but it reels behind her eyelids in a blur, too fast to decipher. She grasps at strings, but the memory is already fading. 

Rey squints in the light, looking out over the vast expanse of ocean. She struggles to comprehend the sun glinting off black hull jutting out of the waves. It’s the corpse of Elijah’s shuttle, out at sea. Slowly, she struggles to her feet. Her left leg screams in protest, and she abruptly lands on her ass, craning her neck to assess the damage. Her pant leg is soaked crimson with her blood. Working quickly, she tears away the fabric, revealing a curved, scythe-like gash stretching from the bottom of her knee cap to mid-calf, still oozing blood. It’s long, but not very deep, and definitely not fatal. She’ll deal with it later. 

She looks around, scanning the length of the beach. There’s no sign of the other ship. It must’ve bailed when it saw the shuttle go down. She prays to every deity she knows that the pilot assumed she didn’t survive the crash. It’ll buy her time if her enemies think she’s dead. 

She stands shakily, placing most of her weight on her right leg. Bits of wreckage from the crashed ship, still smoldering, are lying in the sand. Out at sea, the rest of the shuttle is sinking, its nose pointing toward the sky. Its torn metal hull groans under the weight of the water.

In an instant, she’s stripping off her boots, the wealth of intelligence on that ship at the forefront of her mind. She needs the intel if she’s got any chance of getting ahead of this thing before her little family suffers a long and painful death at the hands of the Empress and her Knights.

She removes her blaster and lightsaber and tosses farther up the beach, out of reach of the waves, and wades out into the water. The salt stings the wound in her leg and she winces. She arches her back in a passable dive and plunges in headfirst, half swimming, half doggy paddling, to the wreckage. The salt stings the cut on her leg, slowing her down. 

By the time she reaches the sinking ship, she’s wrung-out and exhausted, body aching from the crash and the exertion of battling rough waves. The shuttle is filling up with water, and fast. She paddles around the edge of the wreckage, pushing pieces of metal out of the way. She’s mentally calculating the hefty sum wreckage like this would be worth back on Jakku—enough to keep her belly full for months—and forces herself to focus. 

The wreckage heaves another, laborious groan and slips further beneath the waves

She curses, taking a moment to gather her bearings, and dives underwater, trying to find the entrance. The saltwater stings her eyes. There’s a gaping hole in the side of the shuttle where the wall had torn away, letting in gallons of water by the second. Water froths and bubbles around it. It’s her only way in. 

Rey swims toward it, kicking furiously, and slips through, grasping the fraying metal and bent rods to hike herself up. Her head breaks the surface, and her fingernails scrabble for purchase on the slick tile floor of the shuttle. Scorch marks and soot mar the crew’s quarters, and some of the wreckage is still smoldering. The acrid scent of smoke and burning fuel is heavy in the air, and Rey pulls the collar of her dampened tunic over her mouth and nose, trying to keep her breaths even. 

The ship is angled upward, and most of the water gathers at the rear of the shuttle, pulling it down. She’s standing in water that comes up to her knees, and it’s rising. She splashes toward the cockpit. 

Elijah is lying supine on the floor in shallow water. At first, she thinks he might be dead. She doesn’t have time to assess the implications of that because a weak life-force catches her attention. He’s alive, hovering in a state of semi-conscious. Upon closer inspection, Rey realizes he’d managed to get an oxygen mask on, and his breath fogs the interior of the plastic. 

Rey steps over him and rushes to the console, The ship’s power resources are no longer functional, and the whole system’s waterlogged, making it impossible for her to transfer the data.

“Kriff!” she swears, slamming her fist against the console. It sparks, and she wrenches her hand away. All this trouble, and for what? She’s got nothing to show for it besides a few bits of burning wreckage and an unconscious, half-drowned moof-milker who tried to kill her. Twice. 

Rey breathes hard through her nose, trying to center herself. She retrieves her pack, though it’s soaking wet, and slings it over her shoulder. 

Elijah is still dead to the world, and the ship is sinking fast. She’s got maybe a minute before she goes down with it. The thought crosses her mind that she ought to leave him here. Let him drown and wash her hands of him, for good. It would certainly get rid of the headache. 

A voice needles at her. 

If she can’t get her hands on the shuttle’s databank, he’s the best shot she’s got at getting a lead. She knows the Empress is on Vandor, and that’s about it. She knows next to nothing about her enemy, and she’s not too keen to go in blind a second time around. Look where the first time got her—on this kriffing moon, with the world’s biggest asshole. Of all the ways she could meet her end, she refuses to kick the bucket drowning in shuttle wreckage. 

So, she has to save him. She has to save him and interrogate him for information, and then she’ll run him through with her lightsaber for his trouble.

_It’s not the Jedi way._

The second voice sounds a lot like Luke. Rey almost rolls her eyes. 

Right. That. 

She needs to work quickly if either of them are going to make it out of this alive. The water is rising. It brushes her ankle and creeps up to her calf. Panic rises in her, and under it, a voice in her head chants _stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid._

Against her better judgement, she kneels by Elijah, shaking his shoulder. His eyelids flutter. He groans, and she can sense him fighting to regain consciousness, trapped just beneath the surface of a thick fog. She hooks her arms beneath his armpits and hikes him out of the chair. He’s dead weight in her arms. 

“Oh, _Force,”_ she mutters, panting with effort. The water, which continues to rush in from several holes in the ship’s walls, brushes the tops of her knees. It certainly doesn’t make matters easier and she stumbles under Elijah’s weight and the strength of the current. 

Somehow, she manages to get him off the floor towards the tear in the side of the ship. With her arms still locked under his armpits, she lowers herself into the water. 

She sucks in a lungful of air, and plunges in, dragging him through the hole. Once they’re free of the wreckage, she kicks toward the surface. Elijah’s weight drags her down. She kicks toward the surface, using the Force to buoy them upwards. he breaks the surface, gasping for air, hair plastered to her face in wet strings.

Rey struggles to keep his head above water as she makes toward the shore, kicking weakly, letting the current pull them parallel to the shore for a while, until she can coast toward the beach. 

She hauls him onto the sand and drops to her knees, exhausted and shaking. She leans over him, thumbing the skin under his jawline, searching for a pulse. It isn’t there. She holds two digits under nostrils, checking for breath. No vital signs. Kriff. 

She shakes his shoulders, slaps him for good measure. 

Great. This definitely did _not_ make the list of possible outcomes she’d gone over in her head.

She’s gonna have to revive him just to kill him later. 

Rey berates herself over her own predictability, her weakness. On Jakku, sticking with a lost cause could be fatal. You move on to the salvageable parts and you take what you need to eat, to survive another day. She’d seen Ben Solo in Kylo Ren and she’d tried to save him, and look where it got her. She tries to tell herself this is different, that saving Elijah is strictly need-based, that letting him die is letting her child, her _future_ , die too, but it’s not the whole truth. Curiosity killed the loth-cat. No one ever said the same about compassion, but here she is, laboring over the unfixable, trying to piece together something out of nothing.

It’s pointless, maybe, but something kept her rooted there, trying to save someone who would just as easily turn around and put a blaster bolt through her brain. 

If trying to save people of questionable integrity is weakness, then call her weak.

Steeling herself, places her hands on his chest, pressing the heel of her hand on his sternum and begins to pump. She’d witnessed Poe doing this once, when a mission on Hays Minor went south. She attempts to replicate it, with no luck. 

Rey sits back on her heels, pushing the hair that had fallen in her eyes away from her face. Her hand hovers a few inches over his sternum. She curls her fingers into a fist, using the Force to clear his airways and stimulate his heart. 

His body jerks, and he turns his head, gagging as a mouthful of salt water exits his lungs. He rolls onto his hands and knees, coughing and spluttering, then slumps into the sand, barely conscious but alive. 

Reassured, Rey climbs to her feet. She retrieves her pack, sitting in the sand to sift through her belongings. She left the Texts on Tatooine, in a storage compartment on the Falcon. Her heart stutters to a halt.

BB-8.

BB-8! She left him on Tatooine. She promised she’d come back for him and she left him! Now she’s stranded on a strange moon for Force knows how long. It breaks her heart to think of him all alone in the desert. Poe trusted her with his droid and she _left_ him. Gods, how could she be so thoughtless? She kicks herself for her carelessness. 

Rey attempts to push BB-8 to the back of her mind. She tells herself he probably wouldn’t have survived the crash, that it’s better he’s safe, as safe as he can be in a place like Tatooine.

She bites her lip, so hard that it bleeds, and forces herself to focus on what’s in front of her. She’s got a few ration packs, soggy but edible, a medpac, a canteen half-filled with water, and a change of clothes. She stands and limps up the beach to retrieve her weapons. They’re covered in sand. She grimaces, using her sleeve to brush away the clumps of wet sediment molded to the hilt of her saber. She thumbs the switch and it ignites, and the yellow blade blends with the sunlight. Satisfied, she deactivates the saber and stalks back to the place where Elijah lies, still unconscious, in the sand.

She’s mulling over the best place to take shelter and the likelihood of Finn sending for a rescue mission when she’d left barely a trail for him to follow when she sees the blood. A pool of it is spreading around Elijah, and she’s seen enough violence to know that much blood outside the body is probably fatal. She drops her pack and rushes to his side. 

Cursing, she levitates Gresher's dagger of her pack and it soars into her outstretched hand.

She cuts away swaths fabric from his body, revealing the skin underneath, and, _oh gods . . ._

Her blood runs cold. Three, deep gashes are torn into his lower abdomen, on the left side. They run parallel to his ribs, right beneath the rib cage. More blood exits the wound with every beat of his heart, pooling in the sand. It stains everything, inching closer to her knees as she kneels beside him. Rey’s mind races a million miles a minute. She fishes the medpac out of her pack and rummages through it. It’s got nothing of the caliber required to deal with this. This . . . this is uncharted territory. 

She closes her eyes, breathing hard through her nostrils, and resigns herself to playing nurse. She presses a gauze pad over the wound in attempt to stop the blood while she gathers her bearings. It’s soaked through in seconds. If things weren’t bad enough already, Elijah begins to stir. His brows furrow, face pulled tight. A soft groan escapes his lips, and his eyes dart to and fro beneath the lids. 

“Stop moving,” she orders, not sure if he can hear her. He must, because he stops fussing and lets her adjust the wad of gauze she’s got pressed over the gash. It’s crimson and slick with his blood. 

She applies a bacta patch to his wound, but she knows it’s useless. 

_How did this happen?_

He could’ve sustained it in the crash, but then she thinks of the exposed, torn metal in the side of the ship. She’d dragged him through, and the exposed metal must’ve cut him. 

She should quit while she’s ahead. She should abandon him. He’s as good as dead and she’s losing precious daylight. It would be easy. Hell, it would be _smart_. 

Instead, she presses both her palms over the wound and closes her eyes.


	17. The Pyre

The sun is setting. 

Rey keeps her gaze trained on Elijah, poking at the small fire she’d built, fueling it with the soft, rubbery wood she’d scavenged from the jungle running adjacent to the beach. She’d so been preoccupied with Elijah’s predicament that she hadn’t really paused to take stock of their situation. She knows next to nothing about the moon they’d crashed on. As her eyes adjust to the darkness, she scopes out her surroundings. 

The beach’s white sands end where the trees begin. It’s thick, green foliage. Abundant, ropy vines hug the strange, rubbery trees. The sickly sweet smell of blooming flowers stings her nostrils as the wind shifts, traveling from inland. It stirs the flyaways around her face, which had long since fallen out of its neat bun and hangs in a wild shock over her shoulders. It’s similar to the jungle on Ajan Kloss, though Kloss’s sultry air is replaced by cold ocean mists. The dark, spongy wood doesn’t make for good kindling, and her campfire requires constant maintenance. 

Rey is exhausted. She struggles to keep her eyes open, knowing she must be vigilant against the unfamiliar terrain and the possible threats lurking beyond the treeline. She gazes at the ocean, at the dark waves crashing against the black rocks at the bottom of a cliff, a half a mile or so up the beach. 

Elijah is dead to the world. She’d done all she could to heal him without risking her own life. A thin film of new skin patches his wounds, but he’d lost a lot of blood. Too much. He’s breathing, but barely. A waxy pallor clings to his skin, and his lips are a violet shock against his white face. Every half an hour or so she rises and goes to his side, tipping water from the canteen between his chapped lips. Dehydration is a very real threat, more so with all the blood loss. 

She watches rapid, shallow rise of fall of his chest, willing the son of a bitch to live, but even she cannot control such things and she suspects that he is fighting a losing battle. It’s almost too much. She doesn’t particularly like him. He did try to kill her, but it’s not his death that scares her, it’s what comes after. If he dies, she’s back to square one. If he dies, she’ll be alone on this kriffing moon with only the ocean for company. Alone with the ocean and the things with big teeth that live in the jungle. 

The damned ocean. It looks so much like the one from her dreams. 

She falls asleep sitting up, having long since lost the battle against the fatigue numbing her body and mind. Her slumber is uneasy and tormented with dreams she won’t remember. They are filled with wandering pathways and silvery portals and a voice in the dark. A hand extends to her, and she tries to take it, but it withdraws from reach before she can, and she wakes herself up in frustration and sorrow with a bad taste on her tongue. 

She’d let her fire die out. Only a few, smoldering embers remain, and she bends down to coax a flame back to life, feeding it more wood. She checks on Elijah. His breath is strained and rasping. He looks deathly, almost hollow, and Rey’s stomach ties itself in knots. He doesn’t have much longer. 

He lost a lot of blood. Too much. 

Rey berates herself for falling asleep, leaving herself exposed to the elements and whatever creatures could be lurking in the foliage, waiting to strike. A blunder like this would’ve gotten her killed on Jakku. 

_Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid._

She keeps her eyes trained on the treeline, and the mournful cry of some wild animal rises from deep in the jungle. Uneasiness sets in, and she’d like nothing more than to get to higher ground, away from the jungle. She’ll need proper shelter until she can figure out a way to get off-world, but until then, she’s stuck here. The wreckage that landed on the beach will come in handy in the regard, as well as the abundant materials waiting to be harvested in the jungle, but it would be stupid to go traipsing in there in the dead of night, when her eyesight is poor and nocturnal predators are surely lurking about. Plus, she can’t just leave Elijah here. She’ll have to wait for daylight. For now, the beach will have to do. 

Rey’s stomach grumbles loudly, jerking her from her thoughts. She stands, and goes to retrieve her pack. Her leg twinges, painfully, and she knows she’ll have to tend to her own wounds if she’s going to keep her strength up. She’d been to hell and back in the past twenty-four hours, never mind all the life force she’d transferred to try and keep Elijah alive. She reminds herself she’s eating for two now, and every hour she delays keeping up with her body’s basic functions, toeing the line between self-preservation and self-harm, is another hour risking the safety of the child growing in her womb.

She settles on the sand, taking inventory of her supplies. She unwraps a ration pack and shovels the stuff into her mouth before the thought crosses her mind that she’ll probably need to ration, carefully. She forces herself to take smaller bites. There’s probably an abundance of food in the jungle, but the danger of being poisoned by exotic fruits outweighs any desire she has to try and find anything edible in its depths. 

While she eats, she gazes up at the expanse of glittering stars above them, focusing on the lull of the tide. A bird cries in the night. She watches small crustaceans wander around the craggy, black rocks rising from the reef. It’s low tide, and the rocks stand like sentries, covered with algae and glinting in the moonlight. 

She reaches for her canteen and tips it back, washing down the barely edible polystarch 

“Why don’t you just let him die?” 

Rey nearly chokes. She dissolves into a violent coughing fit, craning her neck to glimpse Ben a pace or two behind her, brows knit. He settles himself beside her on the sand, and his knee brushes hers as he struggles to rearrange his long legs. He thumps her on the back, and Rey heaves gulps of air, attempting to recover her breath. 

He cocks an eyebrow, but his question remains unanswered as Rey turns her attention back to the fire. She piles more kindling onto the fire and watches the branches catch flame. He covers her hand with his larger one, and she stills, breath hitching. 

“Rey,” he entreats, stroking lazy circles over her knuckles. Her name on his lips dissolves every shred of good judgement within her. She allows her eyes to meet his own. She allows her walls to come down, just a little. 

“I can’t leave him,” she says, staring at Elijah’s puckered, pained face.

“I know.” 

“He’s going to die.” 

“I know.” 

Ben’s arm settles around her slim frame. She leans into the wall of his body and takes his hand, traces the lines in his palm. 

“He spared my life.”

“He shot you.” 

“ _Almost_ ,” she corrects.

Ben snorts derisively. 

“There are people trying to kill your son. _Our_ son. I thought I had a shot. I thought—”

“He led you straight into a trap!” 

“He serves a master. If the brain dies, the body dies, and I thought if I could get close enough, if I could get behind the enemy line, maybe . . .” she trails off, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “I don’t know.” 

“You can’t keep running straight into hellfire without thinking.You could’ve died. You almost died.”

“I’m not in the mood for a lecture.” 

“I don’t care. It needs to be said. I can’t lose you. Either of you.” He kisses the space between her eyes. His hands moves to span her belly. “I won’t survive it.” 

“You’re dead.” 

His mouth twitches, at that, and she can tell he’s holding back a laugh. _Why_ , exactly, she doesn’t know, because it’s quite possibly the least funny thing she’s ever heard. She wants to slap him, even though it would do about as good as a kitten batting at a lion.

She takes another bite of polystarch, chewing mechanically, staring into the flames. She’s fuming without really knowing why, wrestling with the notion that she simultaneously wants to be as far away and as close to him as possible. She risks another glance at him. He stares down his obscenely large, obscenely beautiful nose at her with enough love in his eyes to make stars collapse. 

The firelight frames his face in tones of orange and yellow, lengthening the shadows in the hills and valleys of his face, and his so-dark-they’re-almost-black eyes look gold and honeyed, deep enough to get lost in. They eyes move down the length of her body unabashedly, they linger a half a second too long at her chest, before resting on her face. Rey holds his gaze. She’s stripped down to nothing but a gauzy undershirt and trousers, still damp, but she’s far past caring about where his eyes wander. 

His brows furrow, eyes landing on the blood smeared across her white undershirt.

“Are you hurt?"

“No."

"The blood . . ."

"It's not mine.” 

It does nothing to appease him. His eyes rove over her, and it’s no longer an appreciation of her physique but a frantic search for injuries. He fists a hand in the fabric of her pant leg and pulls. 

“You’re hurt,” he says, and his voice is thick, strangled. He examines the gash in her calf, probing her skin with a touch lighter than a whisper. 

“It’s nothing.” 

His lips form a thin line. 

He reaches for the medpac and extracts a bacta patch and antiseptic. 

“It’s just a cut,” she said, running a hand through his curls. “I’m fine.” 

He ignores her attempts to brush him off, cleaning and bandaging the wound with painstaking care, and she lets him. She feels a little silly, but it feels nice to be cared for, so she keeps her mouth shut and lets herself appreciate the look he gets when he’s absorbed in a task. It strikes her, with a sickening jolt, how young he looks, like he could still be the boy training under Luke, scribbling notes in the margins of his books with a graceful, calligraphic hand. 

She wonders if he would’ve written poems for her, had they been allowed more time. If he would’ve harnessed galaxies with a turn of phrase. He seems like the type. It strikes her, then, how little they really know about each other. She knows his heart and his mind better than anyone but she doesn’t know his favorite color or how he takes his caf in the morning. She wonders if he would’ve left little notes in her toolbox or under her pillow, and it makes her ache, imagining the kind of domestic intimacy she’d craved for so long. 

Watching him tend to her cut like this, with his lips pulled taught and his fingers moving so carefully, she wonders how many children’s scrapes and bumps he would’ve patched up with the same attentiveness. How many skinned knees and bruised elbows would have undergone this kind of treatment? She wonders if they would’ve grown old together and decides they would’ve, in a kinder universe. 

When he’s finished, he sits back to admire his handiwork. 

"My hero," she deadpans. Ben smirks.

“Thank you,” she says, softening, pressing a chaste peck to his cheek. "Really."

“Rest,” he says. “I’ll keep watch for a while.” 

“Ben—”

“You can’t stay awake forever. You need to save your strength.” 

She opens her mouth to protest, but thinks better of it. She’s exhausted, and he’s right. It won’t do her any good to torture herself waiting for Elijah to die. After a moment’s hesitation, she curls up on the sand. He lays beside her, one hand cradling the back of her head, tracing small patterns over the nape of her neck, the other resting protectively on her belly. She rests her forehead against his. 

The bond is open, and the soft edges of his thoughts drift over the link between them. She nudges the edges of his mind, dipping her toes in, and he welcomes her readily. She searches for the darkness she’d felt in him when he called himself Kylo Ren. She searches for the pain and sadness and fear always bubbling so close to the surface and finds none. There is only contentment. Contentment, and the dull edges of a bone-deep longing so familiar it could be her own. 

“Ben?” 

“Mmm?” 

“What’s your favorite color?” 

He gazes at her through half-lidded eyes. A smile creeps onto his face. They aren’t so rare anymore, but just as beautiful. 

“Green.” 

She sees it—the gardens in Hanna City, the forests on Takodana, the leaves framing the desert flowers she’d gathered on Jakku where she could find them. Beautiful. 

She smiles, nuzzling into his neck. Against all good sense, she lets the movement of his fingers soothe her into the first peaceful, dreamless sleep she’s had in weeks. 

When she wakes, Ben is gone. When she wakes, Elijah is dead. 

* * *

She makes a funeral pyre out of materials she scavenges from the jungle, and all the while she tries not to think about how long she'd slept a mere two feet away from his corpse. She uses her saber to fell trees, bringing them down to quick, bloodless deaths. She relishes the feel of the weapon in her hand, the clean cuts she makes in the bark. It centers her, helps her vent. When the pyre is built, she drags him by the arms across the sand. She whispers apologies he will never hear, knowing the dead deserve a bit more respect, but she’s out of options and she’s spent her whole life hauling things across sand to get all soft about it now. Panting with the effort, Rey pauses to catch her breath, gazing at the dead man’s face. He looks smaller in death. 

With a little help from the Force, she situates him atop of the pyre. She doesn’t know what kind of send-off he would’ve wanted, but she decides he lost that right when he tried to put a blaster bolt between her eyes.

It’s a strange little game she’s playing.

She rests a hand atop his chest, over the place where his heart would’ve beat against her open palm, and her breath catches. Her heart is suddenly too loud in her ears, everything is too bright, and before she can really register what’s happening she’s on her hands and knees in the sand. 

It’s not Elijah’s body but Ben’s, and she isn’t kneeling on a beach but on the hard stone floor of the Sith temple on Exegol. The image of Ben’s face, withered in death and younger than his years, sears itself into the backs of her eyelids. Rey’s buries her fingers in the sand, trying to hold onto something as her world spins out of control. She can’t breathe, can’t move. She fights for air, fights to keep her lunch down, fights for a foothold. 

It’s a long time before she catches her breath. She’s got her forehead pressed into the ground, taking deep, shuddering breaths through her mouth. When she finally gathers her bearings and stands, she can’t bring herself to look at him. It won’t be Elijah’s body lying on the funeral pyre, it’ll be Ben. Unseeing. Unfeeling. Unreachable.

It’s so easy to pretend that everything is okay until it’s not. Ben is dead. Ben is dead. Ben is dead, and she can’t breathe. 

Rey presses two fingers over her sternum, counting her breaths and trying to soothe away the ache in her chest. She walks over to the fire on unsteady feet and holds a stick in the flames until it catches. She lights the funeral pyre, keeping her eyes on the ground until the flames catch and begin eating away at the wood, obscuring Elijah from view. 

Rey kneads the sand with her toes, feeling like she’s sinking, feeling like everything’s coming undone.


	18. The Picnic

There’s a storm coming. She feels it in the air, like a wild animal pacing in its cage. Electricity is hot and heavy in the air. As Rey stuffs her belongings back into her pack and pulls her cape tighter around her shoulders, she eyes the stormfront on the horizon. The clouds, pregnant with rainwater, blot out the sun. The tides are restless, and waves crash petulantly against the shore, a deafening roar in her ears. 

She drags her tongue across her chapped lips. She’s sunburnt and dehydrated. Though years under the harsh Jakku sun has hardened her skin against the elements, she’s not immune. She’d do best to take shelter out of the sun, at a high enough vantage point to spot potential threats, preferably close to a source of freshwater. It’s a tall order. 

She kicks sand over the smoldering embers of her fire and slings her pack over one shoulder, lightstaff clutched in her hand. 

She sets off in the direction of the treeline, watching the darkening sky. Her gaze lingers for half a second on the column of black smoke rising from the funeral pyre, nearly burned out. Nothing remains of Elijah but ash now. The thought leaves a bitter taste in her mouth. All of this for nothing. 

She makes it up the beach and stalks along the treeline, careful to limit the amount of noise she makes, attentive to the placement of her feet and the shifting of her weight as she avoids twigs prone to breaking. Her instincts kick into survival mode like a flipped switch. When she joined the Resistance, it had taken her a long time, months really, to get accustomed to the fact that she wouldn’t have to fight tooth and nail for every meal, didn’t have to constantly look over her shoulder, but those instincts never really faded away completely. 

Her awareness stretches farther. She keeps a few fingers poised in the Force’s web, plucking at its strings and reading the currents. A small rodent roots around in the foliage about a yard away, and a bird takes flight overhead, but there’s nothing large enough to pose a real threat within a five-mile radius. Pacified, she quickens her pace. 

A freshwater stream runs adjacent to the beach, and Rey pauses to fill her canteen. She’s sweating, despite the cool atmosphere. Her hair sticks to her face and salt stings her eyes. The slight incline has grown a bit steeper the last quarter mile or so, which isn’t helping. Her stomach gnaws with dull hunger, despite the fact that she had a hearty breakfast of polystarch and lukewarm water, but she stamps it down, chalking it up to the host of pregnancy symptoms that had manifested in the past week or so. Her breasts ache and she gets dizzy when she stands up too fast. She’d blamed her unpredictable moods on heartache and the broken bond, the cruel little game the ghost of Ben Solo is playing with her heart, but she’s not certain that’s entirely true anymore. She _is_ incubating a small human, after all. 

Rey keeps walking, trying to keep the edges of panic at bay. She tries not to dwell too hard on the enormity of her situation. She’s stranded. Elijah’s ship lies at the bottom of the sea. She has no way to get off-world, and as far as she can tell, this moon isn’t inhabited by any kind of sentient life. It won’t do her any good to agonize over something she cannot control. She’s stuck here, and the next order of business is to stay alive long enough to think her way off this damned moon. She shoves her worry away and concentrates on her footsteps, on the distant threat of thunder rumbling on the horizon, on the chuckle of rushing water from the nearby stream. 

She moves quickly, a silent huntress in the jungle. A light, warm rain begins to fall. Rey turns her head towards the sky, letting the droplets kiss her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. She’s still a stranger to rainfall. She lifts her arms toward the sky and water pools in the valleys of her cupped palms. 

The incline grows steadily steeper, and she’s panting with effort by the time the jungle thins out and she arrives at a clearing. The incline flattens out, forming a grassy bluff that gives way to a sheer cliffside. The sea rages against the sharp rocks, below. The slope leads to a crop of jagged rocks that block the path to a small cove with calm waters. 

Rey climbs down the side of the cliff, fingertips finding little furrows in the rock. Years scaling the skeletons of old star destroyers had made her an excellent climber, but the rock is coated with algae and impossibly slippery. She nearly loses her balance, dislodging a pebble as her foot slips. She watches it tumble down the cliff, blood pounding in her ears. 

Once she’s on even ground, she explores the cove, boots squishing through the damp sand. The rough waters have eaten away at the shale, carving a network of small caves into the side of the cliff. The caves lie out of reach of the tide and shield from the wind. They’re perfect for shelter, with easy access to the beach. They’re a few steps from the jungle and the food and water sources that lie therein.

Rey selects the largest cave to set up camp. She lets her pack fall to the floor, looking around, running her fingers over the shale. It’s dry, a welcome change from the perpetually, sea-dampened, algae-hosting rocks below. The ceiling is low, and she has to keep her knees bent to avoid sustaining a head injury, but it’ll do.

Satisfied, Rey takes a moment to rest her aching legs. She forces herself to take small sips of water, knowing she must stay hydrated. She thinks of the stream, not more than a quarter mile inland. Finding a source of freshwater is no longer a concern, and it takes a considerable weight off her shoulders. 

Fatigue still persists like an old ghost. Electing to put off sleep, Rey settles herself cross-legged on the floor of the cave and meditates, resting her body without surrendering total awareness. She reaches into the Force and lets herself float in its expanse. She lets herself wander, reaching so far she can’t even hear the waves, anymore. Maybe too far. Her mind brushes against Finn’s fiery pinpoint of light, a beacon in the Force. 

She misses him terribly. She wonders where he is now, if he’d noticed her radio silence, if he’s worried about her or if he thinks she’d begun ignoring him, completely. It’s too much. 

She shifts her focus, ignoring the twinge in her heart, and extends her reach. She extends past the star clusters in the Force’s web, past all life, into deep space until it’s nothing but black, and the cells and stardust of her body scream into the void, searching for the other half, the missing piece, something to placate the hunger. 

This time, she receives an answer. 

It’s the baby. As she’d done before, she reaches for it, enveloping it in her light. She can feel its presence, and she gets a glimpse of its essence in the Force. It’s a nascent star, entwined with her own signature, so tiny it feels like a flutter, a whisper. Something as old as time, bigger than the Force, connects her inextricably to this tiny star. It is the bond between mother and child. 

She hadn’t dwelled on it, much, so focused on her mission, on everything at stake. She brushes against it, trying to say everything that needed to be said without uttering a word. She calls up images of an ocean, of flowers in sunlight, the touch of a hand, and lets all these sensations travel across this young and powerful bond, still in its embryonic stages. It soothes away a bit of the pain left by the broken one. It fills the hole, little by little. 

She must’ve fallen asleep. The next thing she knows, the sun is setting and her mouth tastes like something burrowed into her throat and died. She pushes herself up, blinking in the dim light. She sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose to ward off the throbbing in her skull. There’s a dullness to her thoughts and an ache deep in her bones from the crash, from the effort it took to haul Elijah out of the wreckage, and to heal him, and to burn his body. 

She reaches for the canteen and stops short. Two, palm-sized yellow fruits sit on top of her pack. She picks them up and thumbs the tough skin, puzzled. She climbs to her feet and peers out of the mouth of the cave, drawn by an inexplicable force. Sure enough, she catches sight of Ben’s silhouette against the setting sun. He’s sitting straight-backed on the beach, legs folded beneath him, staring out at the waves. 

Rey bites her lip. She could ignore him, go back to the cave and try to puzzle out how she’s going to get off this moon, try to grasp at some semblance of sanity. Something draws her to him, like always, and she wonders why she still kids herself into thinking she’s strong enough to fight his gravitational pull. She’s still spinning in his orbit, and before she can help it she’s trudging up the beach, feet sinking in the wet sand. He turns as she draws nearer, sensing her presence. The sharp lines of his face soften, just a little. 

She holds up the fruit. 

“Did you find these in the jungle?” 

He nods. 

“I appreciate the gesture, but they might be poisonous.” She settles herself cross-legged beside him. 

“They’re not poisonous. They were a delicacy on Chandrila, where I grew up.” He produces another, yellow fruit from his pocket and holds it out to her. She takes it, cocking an eyebrow. 

“Eat,” he says, closing her fingers around it. 

“Is that an order, _Supreme Leader?_ ” she tries, lips bowing in a smile.

Ben smirks. Rey breaks the skin with her fingernails, peeling it away to reveal the soft flesh underneath. All at once, she’s struck by the absurdity of the situation. Never in a million years had she imagined she’d be having a beach-side picnic with the ghost of Ben Solo, but here they are. 

“Split it?” she asks hesitantly. _Does he eat?_

In answer, he holds out his hand. She divides the fruit into halves, then quarters, and presses a piece into his hand. He raises it to his lips and nibbles. Rey tears into the fruit with her teeth. Juice runs down her chin, and she wipes it with the back of her hand. She demolishes her half and picks up a second, pausing when she feels his eyes on her. She risks a glance. 

“What?” 

“You eat like a Hutt.” 

Rey grimaces.

“Well, _excuse me_ , I wasn’t raised to have table manners!” she snarls. She takes a sloppy bite without breaking eye contact, manners be damned. He watches her, laughter dancing in his eyes. 

“I’m sorry, is something funny?”

“You’re cute when you’re angry.” 

“Shut up,” she huffs, cheeks pinking. She picks up another piece of fruit.

“Where did you find these?” 

Ben gestures east, toward the jungle. “There’s a grove about a mile that way.” 

Rey nods. She stares at the water, its surface reflecting the orange-streaked clouds. 

“Good thing. Those ration packs aren’t going to last forever.” 

“You’re talking about this like it’s a long-term arrangement.” 

“Who knows how long I’ll be stuck here,” Rey says, around a mouthful. “Weeks.” She wipes her mouth. “Months, maybe.” 

“The stormtrooper, FN-2187—"

"—his name is Finn," she corrects. 

“Semantics,” Ben says, rolling his eyes. Rey frowns. 

"FN, Finn, whatever, will he look for you?"

“Yes, but I didn’t exactly leave an easy trail to follow. When he doesn’t hear from me, he’ll get worried. He’ll go to Tatooine, he’ll find the Falcon, he’ll know something went wrong, but after that . . . it’s unlikely. This moon barely shows up on the charts. It’s unnamed, uninhabited, and a thousand parsecs from Tatooine.” 

Rey frowns. She watches the waves lapping onto the shore. 

“What am I gonna do?” 

She can’t bear the thought of Finn, frantic in his search, tormented by her radio silence. They’d gotten into the mess together, made an unspoken pact to have each other’s backs, no matter the cost, and now she’d gone AWOL. She curses her own stupidity. How could she have left without at least transmitting her coordinates to the Resistance? She didn’t so much as leave a breadcrumb trail. 

Ben is silent. He rubs her neck. She leans into him, and he pulls her onto his lap. She buries her face in his chest. 

“There’s wreckage from the crash. You could build a transmitter. You’re good at building things.” He plays with the ends of her hair. 

“Most of it’s at the bottom of the ocean,” she says, words muffled by the fabric of his sweater. The odds of a signal reaching all the way to the Resistance’s contacts in the Mid Rim are slim (that is, _if_ she manages to craft a fully functional transmitter out of a few bits of scrap metal).

Ben is silent. She feels him swallow like something’s caught in his throat. She listens to his heartbeat, presses her palm flat against his chest so she can feel it, even though it’s a beautiful lie. 

“You can’t stay here.” 

“Obviously.” 

“You can’t just sit in a cave and waste away.” 

“You think I don’t know that?” 

Silence stretches between them.

“What if I’m here for months, Ben? I can’t bring a child into the world on a deserted moon."

“You won’t have to.”

“How do you know that?” she asks, in a small voice. She feels childish, impossibly young. He presses his mouth to her crown. 

“I just do,” he says against her hair. 

“Is that supposed to be reassuring?” 

“Depends. Is it?” 

She punches his shoulder. 

_“No.”_

A silence stretches between them, punctuated only by the lapping of waves against the shore. Ben’s hand falls to her belly and rests there. 

“Have you thought of a name yet?”

“No. That’s the least of my worries.”

“Well, let’s think of one.”

“It’s still so early,” she says, quietly. She’s hesitant to give a name to something she could so easily lose in an instant. Somehow, a name makes it real. She doesn’t want to name something that could be, _could’ve been._ Nothing in this universe is promised, and naming it will only make it hurt worse when that false promise is broken. 

“I like Anakin,” Ben says, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. 

“What about Chewbacca?” Rey suggests, with a snort. 

Ben frowns.

“You are not naming our firstborn child after a Wookiee.” 

“ _Firstborn_?” Rey asks, incredulous.

“What, you didn’t think we’d stop at one, do you?” He’s obviously joking, given the circumstances, but she doesn’t like the look in his eyes, like he fully intends to give her the future he’s concocting.

“How many did you have in mind?” she asks, figuring she may as well play along. 

“Three,” he says, after a moment’s deliberation. “Three is good.”

“Oh?”

“Two boys, one girl.” 

Rey smiles, despite herself. She nods, gaze falling to his hand, clutched in hers. 

“Three is good,” she echoes.

Rey’s smile falters. There would’ve been more, in that kinder universe. In a kinder universe, they could’ve done things differently. Rey is suffocating under all the _could-have-beens_ , and she knows Ben senses it, because his face softens. 

“Come here,” he says, tucking his arms under her and scooping her up like she weighs nothing. He carries her up the beach. 

“Where are we going?” 

“To the cave.” 

He lays her on the stone floor of the cave and straightens, cracking his head against the ceiling. Rey stifles a laugh as he massages his head, cursing. 

She starts to sit up, but he joins her on the floor, pinning her wrists to either side of her head. He dips his chin to catch her lips in his own. 

“Personally, I like the name Chewbacca,” she says, when he pulls away. 

“Not happening.”

“Why not?" she pouts. "He practically raised you, he told me so himself."

“He was more of the hairy uncle type.” 

Rey bursts into laughter. His lips recapture hers. She can feel him smiling into the kiss. 

“I think that’s the first time I’ve heard you laugh,” he says, “for real.” He looks a little too proud of himself at having coaxed it out of her. 

She smirks. 

“How’s your head?” she starts to ask, but he silences her with another kiss. He slips his hand under her shirt, fingers trailing over her skin. Rey shivers. The kisses get hungrier, needier. Under his weight, with his lips sucking bruises on her neck, whispering her name like it’s a prayer, she almost forgets about her predicament and the thousands of could-have-beens eating at her heart.


	19. The Ship

Bits of wreckage wash up on the beach for days after the crash. Rey travels back and forth from the caves to the shore, scavenging scraps. She fashions a sled out of tree bark strapped together with fronds and grass and hauls her findings. The few pieces that aren’t ruined by rot and salt deposits from the ocean are no help to her. 

The sinewy muscles in her arms strain as she hauls her sled to the mouth of the cave and begins to sift through the scraps. She deliberates long and hard, trying to find the best approach to building a functional transmitter out of nothing but bits of waterlogged metal and wires, with no luck. Without the right parts, she would be no worse off if the only things she had to work with were wood and shrubbery. At least the latter makes for decent kindling.

She pauses to push her hair back from her face, tying it in a single, loose bun. After the storm, temperatures rose, and she’d stripped down to her breast band and trousers to combat the heat. The sun beats down on her bare shoulder. Her skin, tender and sun-kissed, gains a crisp, brown hue and new sun-spots and freckles dot her arms. In the quiet moments, Ben’s fingertips map each new blemish. He is never far away, and she lets him keep her company against every shred of good sense she possesses. 

She resigns herself to the notion that she has, indeed, become a crazy space hermit who talks to ghosts. She smiles to herself; Master Luke would be more than a little horrified to realize she followed in his footsteps.

On the fourth day of her exile on the jungle moon, she takes a strip of cloth she’d cut from her pantleg and a porous rock and bathes where the waters are calm. She scrubs the grime from the bottoms of her feet and combs her fingers through her hair in a meager attempt to keep clean. She washes her clothes in the tides and lays them out on rocks to dry, and the fabric stiffens in the salt and sun, rough against her sunburnt skin.

While she bathes, she watches the fish. They travel in schools along the shoreline, and their big, silvery bodies are easy to spot in the sun and shallow water. Rey taps into the Force and seizes hold of one. It’s lithe body flops onto the rocks, fins flicking, mouth open and gills undulating. 

Hauling her kill, Rey uses Gresher’s dagger to flay and gut the fish. She roasts it over the fire and enjoys the first, satisfying meal she’s had since, well, she can’t even remember the last time she’d had fresh meat. The fish is light and white and it goes down easily with a bit of water and a slice of the yellow fruit from the jungle. Belly full and mind quiet, she falls asleep and wakes to the sun filtering through the cave’s entrance, so completely wrapped in Ben’s embrace that it takes several minutes to disentangle herself from his limbs. She thinks some deep-space monster’s death grip would be harder to break. 

She allows herself a glimpse at him, framed in the light of the rising sun. Her eyes trace the slope of his nose and his brow, furrowed with a guarded uneasiness even in sleep. She wants to kiss away whatever’s making his face do that. She wants to take away his pain and excise the shadows that still nest deep in his eyes, but she feels farther away from him than ever. 

She doesn’t want to leave his warmth but the early morning pregnant pee calls her away. After she relieves herself, she takes a walk along the shoreline, watching the waves, trying to reason with herself over this latest trend, because it isn’t the first time she’s woken up ensnared in the arms of Ben Solo’s ghost and she has a hunch it won’t be the last. 

The stagnancy of this _thing_ , whatever it is, eats at her. She can’t go on like this forever, even though she’d like to. She can’t keep cheating herself into thinking this is a kind of happily ever after. Nothing has changed. Not really. Ben Solo is dead, and what she’s dealing with is some disease of the mind. An illusion, nothing more, despite what he tells her, because how can she go on trusting his word when he is a manifestation of the marbles coming loose in her head?

Rey continues hauling scraps up the beach, picking it clean and piling it outside of the entrance to the cave, where she sits in the shadow of the cliff, sheltered from the sun, and puzzles over it until the sun is setting and her grumbling stomach calls her away. She hikes through the jungle, visiting the grove of fruit trees, stripping the branches of their burden and filling her pack. The lower branches are nearly picked clean and Rey has to scale the trunks to reach the fruit at the top, ripe for harvesting. She fills her canteen at the stream and relieves a tree of one of its low-hanging branches and fashions it into a staff, turning the sturdy, pliable wood over in her hands. Comforted by the familiarity of it, she hikes back to her cave to deposit her goods. 

With the abundance of fruit, fish, and freshwater, her days take on a kind of routine. She tries not to let it affect the urgency of her desire to get offworld or lull her into a false sense of security. Here, on this lonely moon where her only companions are the ocean tides and the ghost of her dead lover, routine is dangerous. 

Another day passes, then another. The pickings grow slimmer until the wreckage stops appearing on the beach entirely. The tides are shifting, and Rey has nothing but a pile of junk to show for her numerous trips back and forth from the beach to the caves. 

She takes her frustration out on innocent bystanders, slashing tree trunks with her lightstaff until they’re peppered with smoldering cuts. She tells herself she’s practicing forms but Ben’s smirk says otherwise, one brow cocked, no doubt a snarky one-liner dancing on his tongue. She silences him with a look. He closes the space between them, thumbing the switch on her saber. The blades disappear with a snap, and then he’s got her backed up against a scorched tree and his hand in her underwear, hard against her thigh, and she supposes she takes some of her frustrations out doing this, too.

It’s odd, how even when they’re fucking it feels a lot like a battle. She couldn’t silence the animalistic growls building in her throat if she tried and he is still a contradiction, fingers trailing softly down her back even when his movements inside her are rough, even when his teeth clip her earlobe, and she kisses him sweetly even as her fingernails tease red marks along his skin. She should feel embarrassed but she’s anything but. She was kidding herself if she thought this would be gentle. It is explosive, and it shakes her to her core and leaves her stuttering for breath, but at the same time it feels right. She’s fiery enough to match him and he’s gentle enough to surprise her. She used to blame her attraction to him on some divine plot, but she knows that’s half a lie. They fit. Simple and plain. 

She’s hiking in the jungle when the glint of sunlight on metal catches her eye. A slab of durasteel paneling, about two square feet, lies half-concealed in the foliage. She pulls back the shrubbery, fingertips trailing over the sun-heated metal. It’s from the exterior of a ship, but the color doesn’t match Elijah’s shuttle. Perplexed, Rey continues on. A few yards away, she discovers a second piece of scrap metal. Farther up the path, she finds evidence of a crash. The topmost branches of some of the trees look damaged, bent in odd angles, and deep gouges are torn into the soil. Rey’s pace quickens. She crashes through the foliage, following the trail off the beaten path, and stops at a wide clearing. There, amidst fallen trees and gouged earth, lies her treasure—a starfighter buried nose-first in the earth, its viewport completely torn away, wing dangling by threads. 

Rey’s heart skips a beat. It’s the fighter that pursued her before the shuttle went down. She rushes toward the wreckage, fingers fumbling for the blaster at her hip. She stops when she gets within range, blaster raised, eyes scanning the surrounding foliage for a potential attacker. There’s none to speak of. The pilot is still strapped in his chair, slumped over and very, very dead.

Rey grimaces as the stench hits her. The body has been rotting in the sun for days, and the smell sets her stomach roiling with nausea. Flies crawl over his body, lighting on the exposed, bloody wound in his abdomen where the impact of the crash sent a two-foot long jagged piece of metal into one end, out the other. The blood, long dried and the color of rust, is everywhere. Part of his helmet is torn away, leaving half his face visible. His facial features are distorted, bloated in death. One, gray eye stares sightlessly into the canopy above.

Rey, nose buried in her inner elbow to stave off the stench, lowers her blaster and approaches the fighter. She climbs into the cockpit and stoops over the body, careful not to touch it. She bats at the flies, feeling sick. She slips a hand into his flight suit, searching for his identification, and finds nothing. Her mind races. 

She didn’t think the fighter sustained much damage when they entered atmo. He certainly didn’t have any reservations firing on her. She struggles to piece together the puzzle. It all happened so fast. The shuttle’s engine failed, it caught fire, and then . . . and then she was on the ground. End of story. She didn’t see what happened to the fighter. Now she has her answer. 

She leans over the console and fiddles with the controls. She powers up the shuttle. It hums to life. Her heart climbs into her throat. Her hands shake. The lights flicker once, twice, then die. The engine cuts out, leaving the buzzing of flies and the whisper of wind through leaves in its wake. Rey curses, pushing her hair out of her eyes. 

So close. So close, and now this bucket of bolts won’t cooperate. Now she’s got a dead body to deal with, and the stench is making her sick and before she can truly process this little inkling of hope as it is snatched away from her, she vomits onto the floor. It’s mostly just bile, but it makes her head spin and she has to leave the cockpit and get some air before she can even begin to puzzle out her next move. 

She stares at the crashed fighter from the edge of the clearing, the only place far enough away that the stench of death doesn’t turn her insides to jelly. She can’t believe some wild animal hasn’t wandered by and eaten him yet, though the flies will certainly make quick work of that if she leaves him out here to rot any longer. 

Her stomach turns at the thought of dragging that bloated corpse out of the fighter. It has to be done if she’s to start salvaging what she can. It’s gonna take a lot of sweat and tears to get that hunk of junk in the air, but she’s a lot better off than she was this morning with only the washed-up shuttle wreckage to work with. 

Rey sets to work. She builds a second pyre using scraps of wood from the jungle. She cuts a swatch of fabric from her pantleg and dips it in the viscous, yellow sap dripping from a nearby tree. She ties it around her head and pulls it up to cover her mouth and nose. Steeling herself, she returns to the wreckage. 

The sap’s sweet scent helps a little to mask the smell. Working quickly, she unbuckles the pilot from his seat, fingers fumbling with the straps. She hooks her elbows under his armpits and hikes him out of the chair. He’s heavy, dead weight in her arms. She huffs and puffs and curses, using the Force to supplement her manpower as she hauls the body out of the fighter and across the clearing. She lights the pyre and scurries away, busying herself by collecting fruit from a nearby grove to avoid the smell of burning flesh as the pyre begins to belch black smoke. 

Darkness is falling by the time she returns. By then, the pyre has burnt out. The embers glow orange in the shadows. She throws more wood onto them and coaxes the flame back to life. There’s no point in returning to the caves now that night has fallen. She’ll just have to make the trek back when morning comes. She’s still wary of the jungle. She’d found evidence of animal tracks in the soil on multiple occasions, and she’s not keen to meet whatever made them face to face in the middle of the night.

She sets up camp by the fire, settling herself cross-legged with her back to a tree. She nibbles on fruit and polystarch, staring at the silhouette of the starfighter in the twilight. If she can fix it up, it’s her ticket home. Even then, she’s got ample materials to get a message to the Resistance’s contacts in the Sloo sector, and the fighter’s databank, if it has anything remotely like the goldmine of intelligence in the archives of Elijah’s shuttle, will help her insurmountably. Still, she doesn’t allow herself too much optimism. 

She studies her surroundings, trying to empty her mind, but she can’t seem to quiet all the numbers she’s running in her head, calculating all the repairs that need to be done, and that’s just the damage she can see with a naked eye. She doesn’t doubt that once she gets her hands dirty, she’ll unveil a host of other problems that need fixing. Then there’s the fact that she doesn’t have any proper tools. A million things could go wrong between now and the best-case scenario she’s concocted in her head, and she can’t afford to lose anything else over false hope. 

The shadows deepen as night falls. Rey slips in and out of meditation. Every snapped twig or bird call jolting her from her concentration and sending her hand flying to the saber at her hip. After the third or fourth interruption, she gives up completely. There’s no point in meditating when she’s so on edge. Luke would tell her to focus. He would tell her that a true Jedi would be able to maintain perfect concentration in the middle of catastrophe and hellfire or whatever, but she’s had enough. She’s human, and every rustle in the foliage is a potential beast looking for its next meal or a hooded figure with a dagger in hand, poised to attack. 

Instead, she levitates small stones to entertain herself. She invents a game, chucking pebbles at a larger rock a few yards away, trying to hit it. Over time, she improves her accuracy, until she can hit her target every time, without fail. When she gets bored of that, she builds a tower, stacking one stone on top of the other. 

“There’s more to the Force than lifting rocks, you know,” Ben says, sitting beside her. He prods her shoulder. 

“I got bored.”

“Who was he?” Ben asks, gesturing to the crashed starfighter. 

“I don’t know. He didn’t have any identification.”

“He died in the crash?”

“Skewered by a piece of shrapnel,” Rey says, nodding solemnly. “Not pretty.”

Ben grimaces. Rey presses a palm to his cheek, fingertip drawing circles over his jaw, the soft skin of his earlobe. 

“Did it hurt?” she asks softly. 

“What?”

“When you died.”

Ben swallows hard. 

“No.” When he speaks, his voice trembles. “It was like falling asleep.”

“Oh,” she manages, struggling to choke down the lump in her throat. 

“The only thing that hurt was feeling you die. It tore me apart.” His voice flutters, breaks. Her thumb ghosts his bottom lip. “I didn’t want to live in a world you weren’t a part of. I knew what I had to do." He takes her face in his hands. “When you opened your eyes, you saved me. I’d done something good, in the end, and I knew I was going to die but in that moment I didn’t care, and the only thing that hurt was knowing we didn’t get to have more time.”

She stares at him, stricken, words bogging up in her mouth. 

“You’re here now,” she offers, in a small voice. “We have time.”

He rests his forehead against hers, managing a small smile.

“All the time in the world.”

It’s another one of his beautiful little lies, one she lets herself believe, if only for a moment.


	20. The Princess

The foul stench of rotting flesh still clings to everything. Rey keeps the cloth pulled over her mouth and nose to combat it, but the stink still makes her head spin. It seeps into her hair and her clothes until she begins to feel like a walking corpse, and that notion is enough to send her into a dissociative thought spiral, so she pushes it away, giving her head a little shake to clear it, and sets to work. She’s been around too many dead bodies lately. 

She assesses the damage, breathing through her mouth as she contemplates the next steps. The fighter’s viewport is gone, the wing is nearly severed, and the landing gear’s a little worse for wear. The controls are intact, but she’s still having trouble getting the power on for more than a few seconds before it sputters and dies. It could be the power modulator, or the motivator, or a thousand other things. At this rate, she’ll be walking to Vandor. She chews on her lip, honing her focus, trying to keep her frustrations at bay and failing miserably.

She’s been here too long. She’s sick of this kriffing moon and the kriffing ocean and the kriffing sun beating down on her shoulders, quickly turning this hunk of metal into a toaster oven. Sweat slides down her back and drips into her eyes. A bird chatters noisily overhead and Rey resists the urge to launch a carefully aimed pebble at its head. 

In theory, she could do it. She could fix this kriffing ship and get off-world within a standard week without breaking a sweat. That is, if she had the proper tools. If the universe wasn’t hellbent on destroying every shred of hope within reach. _If._

She hikes back to the caves to retrieve some of the makeshift tools she’d patched together from scrap metal. She walks along the shoreline, splashing in the waves, trying to clear her mind. Sometimes things require a fresh perspective, and separation from the task at hand seems like it’s in her best interest, so she watches the gulls and the waves and the strange, horned lizards that sunbathe on the rocks by the shore. They’re a putrid green color with four, mustard-yellow bulbous eyes, and quite possibly the ugliest things she’s ever seen. She wonders what they’d taste like if she killed one and ate it, but she strongly suspects they’re poisonous. Even if they aren’t, it would probably fuck with her digestive system for weeks. 

At the caves, she perches on a rock and wolfs down her last ration pack. In between bites, she talks to the baby. Nonsense, mostly, but it keeps her mind off things and acquaints her son to the sound of her voice, rough with disuse. She exercises it like a muscle stiff from inactivity. She feels a little stupid, considering the baby hadn’t developed functioning ears yet and there’s no way in hell he can hear her, but some part of her believes her sentiments are echoed in the bond they share, so she doesn’t mind explaining the way the ocean looks with sun glinting off it or describing the unsettling stare of the four-eyed lizards or venting her frustrations about the crashed starfighter and her violent unpreparedness to repair the caliber of damage she’s dealing with. 

She tells her son about her upbringing on Jakku, but only the good things, like the day she found Dosmit Raeh’s helmet or the kindness of some spacer from offworld who dished out more for the recycled parts she was selling than they were worth or the times she’d found desert flowers poking through the dry soil. She tells her son about his father. What he looks like, how he’d saved her. 

After she polishes off the ration pack, she strips off her clothes and goes for a swim in the ocean. The tides are calm and it would do her some good to wash the stench of death from her skin. She bobs in the waves, floating on her back and staring up at the blue sky, dotted with clouds. It’s beautiful here. Under different circumstances, she would’ve been able to appreciate it, but all she can see is a wilderness slowly becoming her prison. Under different circumstances, it would’ve made for a half-decent vacation destination. 

She almost laughs. In a kinder universe, she would’ve taken time off from the war. She would’ve traveled, would’ve seen all the green in the galaxy. She would’ve wandered to the edge of the universe and back in the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy, with Ben Solo at her side. In a kinder universe, she would’ve been happy. 

Rey climbs out of the water and slips back into her clothes. She slings her pack over her shoulder and leaves the caves, trekking back to the crashed starfighter. 

* * *

She’s balls deep in engine grease. About an hour ago, she called it quits on trying to get this thing back in the air. Without the right tools, it’s near impossible, and it wouldn’t do any good to waste time and energy laboring over near impossibilities. Years in the Jakku sun, laboring over crashed starships to keep her belly full had taught her the dangers of wasted time and energy. Instead, she focuses her attention on the backup power generator. If she can get it running, she can broadcast an SOS transmission to passing ships in the Sloo sector. In theory. If her calculations are correct, this moon isn’t too far off course, and if she’s lucky, some concerned Samaritan on a routine trade run will receive her message and come for her. 

As she works, fingers moving on autopilot to rewire the circuitry, which will, if things go according to plan, allow her to jumpstart the generator, her mind drifts to the unfinished business waiting for her when this blows over. When she’s off this kriffing moon and the Empress’s blood is on the ground and her son is safe, the old Jedi temples await her. She imagines she’ll have to settle somewhere, once her son is born. She cannot birth and raise a child amidst the war-torn, vagabond lifestyle she’d endured for the past year. Children need constancy, security, all the things that had been snatched away from her in the gutters of Jakku.

She knows Leia owns property on Chandrila and Naboo, and Rey is certain her former master and the grandmother of her child would have no reservations letting her stay in any one of those locations, but the fantasy is such a far cry from the dire straits she’s stuck in that Rey almost crushes the thought entirely. She’s never been to Naboo but she’s heard rumors of its magnificence, and she cannot fathom a world where she gets a happily ever after living in a godsdamned castle on one of the most beautiful planets in the galaxy. There is so much work to be done, and tomorrow isn’t promised, so she returns her attention to the task at hand with daydreams of Naboo’s turquoise waters and rolling meadows not far from her mind. 

The sun is low in the sky by the time she retires for the day, stiff from crouching in the cockpit for so long, lightheaded from the heat. She has to remind herself to eat, to drink water, to take care of herself. She sets up camp at the edge of the clearing. It’s more convenient than making the journey back and forth to the caves, and she decides to make this a permanent arrangement until her job is done. Among the foliage, she watches and waits, and when she fails to keep her eyelids from drifting shut, she sleeps and she dreams, and she thinks Ben lays by her side and wraps her in his arms at some point in the night, but she can’t be sure because when she wakes, she’s alone. 

* * *

She’s done it. Rey holds her breath and activates the power generator. The fighter hums to life, and the controls light up. Rey pumps her fist, scrambling to her feet and rushing to the console, reaching for the transceiver. Her triumph is short-lived. Before she can thumb the switch, the lights flicker. She must’ve crossed a wrong wire, because the acrid smell of electrical fire fills her nostrils and the circuitry begins to spark. 

“Kriff!”

She jumps up and rushes to shut off the power, avoiding touching any of the live wires. The power cuts out, and Rey flaps her hands, fanning the haze of smoke. She clamps a hand over her mouth, eyes watering, and bends to inspect the scorched wires.

The whole damn thing is fried. 

_"Kriff!"_

Her defeat gives way to rage, and before she can think better of it, she’s reaching for the lightsaber at her hip. The poor fighter’s already damaged interior takes the brunt of her attack. She draws jagged slashes in the metal until it’s red hot and smoldering as the dizzyingly horrifying notion that she may never get off this moon sinks in. Her anger dissipates as quickly as it had come, and she deactivates the blades with a snap, standing in the middle of the smoke and fumes and destruction, shoulders shaking as the sobs build in the back of her throat. Her knees hit the floor. She’s a grenade, and when she explodes, she can almost feel the shrapnel flying in every direction. The heat obliterates everything. 

What an overreaction. She can’t afford to waste time on tears, but she can’t seem to stop them, either. She buries her face in her hands and cries. Ben’s hand falls on her shoulder. She tells him to go away, shrugging away from his touch, but he persists. Rey jumps to her feet, whirling around with her lightstaff raised above her head, and finds herself face to face, not with Ben, but with Leia. 

“Leia?” Rey chokes, arms falling to her sides. 

The woman’s face softens. She’s dressed all in white, emanating soft, divine light. Rey meets her eyes, dark like Ben’s, and full of the same fire, but a soft wisdom, too. Leia opens her arms and Rey doesn’t hesitate to walk into them. Leia’s arms encircle her. Tears leak from Rey’s eyes and takes a shuddering breath. Leia steps back, holding her at arm’s length. There are tears in the general’s eyes, but Leia’s not one to let sentimentality get in the way of business. She gives Rey’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. 

“Let’s take a walk.”

* * *

They walk the length of the beach. Rey keeps her eyes on the white foam flirting with the shoreline. Leia walks beside her; her Force ghost leaves no footprints. Rey vents her frustrations, and Leia nods, offering the occasional comment, but mostly letting her talk.

“I don’t know what to do,” Rey says. “This wasn’t part of the plan. ”

“Things rarely go according to plan,” Leia says, with a laugh. “I learned that the hard way.” She touches Rey’s shoulder. “Trust yourself, Rey. You have everything you need.”

“How can you say that?" Rey says, tears of frustration pricking at her eyes despite her attempts to tame them. "Why do you have so much faith in me?" 

“You remind me of myself, when I was your age,” Leia says simply. Rey almost laughs. 

“I’m sure I don’t quite live up to the Princess of Alderaan.”

“You’d be surprised.” Leia’s eyes grow wistful. “I was reckless and angry. Opinionated. I didn’t know when to keep my mouth shut. I liked bossing people around a little too much.” She laughs. “I guess things never really change.” 

A silence lapses between them. Leia watches the ocean, Rey stares at her bare toes half-buried in the sand. She asks the question that’s been gnawing at her heart since she spoke to Luke on Ahch-To. 

“Why did you train me if you knew I was a Palpatine?” 

“I don’t judge people on the mistakes of their blood relatives,” Leia says, face hardening. “Look who my father was.”

“Anakin turned back to the light.” 

“Anakin will never truly be absolved of his sins. He made mistakes, but I suppose he did something right, in the end. He chose to save his son. I’ve tried to put it in perspective, tried to reason it out like a game of trades, but it doesn’t add up. It doesn’t make up for what he did. I still haven’t forgiven him.”

Leia gives her head a little shake, as if to clear it, and meets Rey's gaze, lips turned up in a smoke that doesn't quite reach her eyes. 

“Tell me, how is my son?” 

Rey looks at her. “I don’t—”

“Please, spare me the hemming and hawing. I'm not an idiot. I sensed your connection with my son. At first, I feared it. Now, I marvel at it. You had a right to your privacy, but there were things you couldn't keep from me. You two are close. So close, in fact, that even death could not separate you.”

“I don’t understand it,” Rey says, quietly. “I see him, even after . . . after he died, and it’s like he’s still alive. He says it’s because we’re a dyad in the Force, that we’re linked through space and time. We’ll be reunited in death. Until then, it just goes on like this . . . like I’m living with a ghost.” 

Leia’s mouth forms a thin line. 

“That’s a bleak way to put it.” 

“I know. I tell myself he’s an illusion. Something my brain made up to help me cope with everything, but . . . I’m not so sure.” 

“You already know the truth,” Leia says. “He’s always been there.”

“I can’t feel him anymore,” Rey says, eyes welling with tears. “Not the way I used to before.”

“Suppose whatever happened could be reversed? Suppose you were reunited in life?” Leia asks, slowly. “Could it be done?” 

“That’s impossible.” 

Leia smiles. 

“Stranger things have happened.” 

“You’re saying I can bring him back?” 

Leia waves a hand dismissively. 

“If you’d trust the speculation of a poor old woman, then yes, I imagine you could.” 

“How?” 

“I don’t know. I’m just a ghost. The dead aren’t any wiser than the living. My brother likes to be pretentious about it. I’ve told him to get off his high horse. Of course, he won’t listen.” 

_“Don’t do this,"_ Rey says. A tear slips down her cheek. “I can't take it anymore." 

The waiting, the false hope, the ones who are never coming back.

_I'll come back for you, sweetheart._

The tally marks on durasteel. The binary sunset. The phantom hand in hers. 

_The belonging you seek isn't behind you, it is ahead._

“I understand, Rey. There have been too many losses, too many broken promises. But you already know what I’m telling you is true. I’ve seen your heart. You know the truth.”

“I can't," Rey sniffs. It’s too much. She can’t afford that kind of optimism. Not when she’s spent the better part of the last two months trying to exorcise the ghost in her attic. 

"You can."

She could bring him back. As if he never left, she could bring him back. She could have the future she so desperately wants. Her son would grow up in a world where his father wasn’t a treasured memory but the old grouch who made his pancakes in the morning, and she could have everything she’s ever wanted. 

Or she could lose everything she has left. 

Can she risk betting everything on a whim? On the tiniest ray of light in the shadows? And does she even have the means to cheat death, if she tried?

Rey attempts to reign in her hopes, trying not to let them skyrocket as she stands here, sinking in the wet sand, but she can’t keep herself from ruminating over fantasies of their reunion. She plays it out over and over in her head. Gods, how she aches for a world where she doesn’t spend every waking moment on the verge of a panic attack, chewing over the memory of his lifeless body, drawn and white and impossibly young. 

"I can bring him back," she whispers, just to taste the words on her tongue. She meets Leia's eyes. “I have to find him.” 

Leia takes her hand. 

“He’ll wait for you. Right now, you must think of your family.”

Rey is barely listening. Her eyes follow the flight path of a gull riding a current of wind, thoughts racing.

She can’t help but imagine what it would be like to hold him, to feel his pulse under her fingertips, to feel his lips on hers. Without interruptions. Without a war between them. Just the two of them and their son and all the time in the world. It has been such a far cry from the realm of reasonable possibility for so long, and now it’s within her grasp and she almost can’t breathe for how badly she wants it. 

“Rey,” Leia entreats, eyes softening. “I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of my grandson.” 

Rey meets her eyes, eyes welling with tears. 

“He can’t grow up without his father.”

“He has you.” 

“I can’t do this alone.” 

“You won’t have to.” 

Leia’s gaze is faraway.

“Han was a good father. He’d deny it, but he was. When Ben was a toddler, they were inseparable.” She laughs. “Ben followed him around like a puppy. He wanted to be just like his dad.” A tear slips down Leia’s cheek. “Time marches on. They grow up. They leave. They make mistakes, and you can’t stop them from making them but you can always be there to catch them when they fall. I tried, but I suppose that is my greatest failure. I wasn’t always there. You will be. I just hope . . . I hope he can forgive me.” 

“He will,” Rey says, “in time. He’s a good man.” 

“He’ll be a good father, too,” Leia says. She kisses Rey’s cheek, and then she’s gone, leaving Rey to wipe the tears from her eyes. The spark of hope she’d tried to stamp out for so long ignites, fans into a flame. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2 NOTES:  
> First, Thank you thank you thank you for all your wonderful feedback! I hope you're enjoying. Don't forget to drop a comment and say hi!
> 
> Second, I have been listening to these songs on repeat while I write and I thought I would share with y'all in case you need good song recs. Most of these are Rey's POV.
> 
> 1) Cosmic Love by Florence and the Machine  
> 2) What Kind of Man by Florence and the Machine  
> 3) Dead Man's Arms by Bishop Briggs  
> 4) From Eden by Hozier


	21. The Student

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a loooong chapter for y'all. Enjoy

Rey lets her feet carry her, directionless, through the jungle. The brush crunches under her feet, muffled somewhat by the damp soil. She pays little attention to where she places her feet, where she’s headed, what creatures lurk nearby. Her thoughts move a million miles a minute. She chews the inside of her cheek, tongue probing the ragged skin, and all the while Leia’s words echo in her mind. 

This is one link in the nexus of events, both past and present, so why does she feel like she’s standing at some great precipice? 

Ben has been dead for almost two months now. She felt his heart stop beating. She felt him torn from her, leaving mangled scar tissue where their bond should’ve been, and the wound hadn’t healed. She can’t just flip a double bird at the grim reaper and carry on with her day, as much as she’d like to, but something needles at her.

She knows Leia. Her spirit wouldn’t descend from the heavens just to play cruel little tricks. Leia is a politician and a strategist and a war hero. She operates under logic and practicality. She isn’t one to put too much stock in sentimentality and silly fantasies. If Leia believes that her son can be saved, then he can be saved. The question is, _how?_

She runs through all the possibilities, mentally flicking through the pages and pages of worn parchment and ciphers she couldn’t translate. She’d heard whispers of ancient Force users who’d used their power to bring loved ones back from the dead, but she’d always been told those abilities led straight to the dark. The Force had shown her visions, visions of Ben who wasn’t really Ben, an old temple on Mortis and the mirror on Ahch-To and a dark place filled with synapses or doors, she’s not sure which analogy fits better, because in reality it was like nothing she’s ever seen. 

Her memory is hazy, but there are some things she cannot shake. The sensation of Ben’s fingers slipping from her grasp, and the creature in the bacta tank who looked like Ben but was not him, who stared at her with cold eyes. Eyes that lusted for her blood. 

It bogs up in her semi-conscious, a background warning, like the electricity of an oncoming storm. It whispers _this is important_ , but she can’t remember enough details to draw any solid conclusions, so she flounders in the vague edges of dreams and berates herself for lacking the clarity of mind to recall what the Force had tried to show her. The ground she’s standing on is unsteady. This path is leading somewhere, but _where_ , exactly, is a question she can’t even begin to answer. 

She's far away, down the rabbit hole, trying to unravel a knot that just gets bigger and bigger. She thinks she has it. She tugs, the string goes slack, and there's another knot. 

She doesn’t notice the beast until it’s too late.

By then, it’s charging straight toward her, and she doesn’t have time to tug her lightsaber free from her belt before she’s flat on her back, fighting for breath as the wind is knocked from her lungs. 

It’s some horrendous green thing that looks like the offspring of a boma and a krayt dragon—a stocky, reptilian quadruped with beady eyes and a tough hide the color of old mustard, a little bit green, a little bit yellow, and a lot like it can’t decide what it wants to be. It has two, wicked-looking happaborian tusks jutting from its bottom lip and a row of bloodred spines lining its back. 

Rey’s hand flies to her chest, probing her sternum and ribs for breaks. Black spots dance in her field of vision. She pushes herself onto her hands and knees and straightens, reaching for her blaster. The creature gives its great head a shake, powerful maw opening in a snarl. 

It charges, and Rey squeezes the blaster’s trigger. The red beam of light grazes its side, barely marking the armored hide. The only thing she manages to do is anger it. It lets out a war-cry, and Rey drops to her knees in a forward-roll, barely avoiding the beast as its tusks nearly gore her side. It knocks the blaster from her hand, and the weapon tumbles to the ground. Climbing to her feet, Rey reaches for the hilt of her lightsaber and ignites the double blades. When the beast charges again, she’s ready. 

When it gets within range, Rey drops to her knee, throwing her body weight forward to power her swing. Her yellow blade penetrates the soft skin of the beast’s throat. Rey strains, forcing the blade upward through sinewy muscle and tissue of the neck. A spurt of hot blood rains from the wound, coating her from head to foot as the beast screams and crumples to the ground, head nearly separate from its body. Rey deactivates the twin blades. Her chest heaves. She watches blood pump from the severed arteries in its neck with each, last, frantic beat of its heart. The blood soaks through the soul, the flow lessening until it’s a slow ooze. 

Rey presses two fingers to her sternum, repeating her earlier search for broken bones and finds none. Her body throbs with a bone-deep ache from the impact she’d undergone when she’d landed on the ground after a creature weighing in at several tons hit her head-on at full speed. It’s miraculous she’s still alive, let alone on her feet and relatively uninjured. 

Except she isn’t. As Rey takes a step to retrieve her blaster, a sharp pain shoots through her leg. Rey bites off a gasp, hobbling to a nearby log. She sits, propping her leg on a mossy stone, and rolls up her pant leg to unveil a large bite mark, about eight inches in diameter, in her upper thigh. Two rows of puncture wounds—one top, one bottom, oozing blood and pus-like, light yellow liquid.

Rey eyes the creature’s serrated teeth, visible beneath its parted lips. It must’ve clipped her leg and she hadn’t realized. Rey probes the bite with her fingertips. The puncture wounds are deep, but if the bite had ruptured her femoral artery, more blood would be exiting her body than currently is, and that’s reassuring. 

She stoops to retrieve her blaster and stuffs it in her belt, wincing as a duller, deeper pain rockets from her knee-cap to her hip. Someday she’ll laugh about the time a mysterious jungle creature almost ate her for breakfast, but right now the chunk it took out of her leg hurts like a bitch and she sure as hell ain’t laughing.

She leaves the _thing_ , whatever it is, where it lies, starting up the path to retrieve the medpac she’d stupidly left at her campsite by the crashed fighter a quarter mile or so inland. It takes all her willpower to keep one foot in front of the other, limping heavily. She prays to every deity she knows that the baby wasn’t injured when she took a hit. She probes the Force’s web, searching for her little star, and finds him nestled safely in her light. He’s subdued, content. Like he could be sleeping. Like he could be dreaming. 

Reassured, Rey pushes on, scrambling over rocks and picking her way through tangled vines and thick foliage, face screwed up against the pain, tears stinging her eyes. Blood seeps through her pants and stains the fabric. Her mind is slow and foggy. She gives her head a little shake to clear it, but the motion only sends a dull, throbbing ache through her skull. Her breathing is shallow and uneven. She presses a clammy palm to her forehead, licking her chapped lips. 

Rey’s eyes fix on the canopy above. The leaves slide in and out of focus until they’re just green globs. She struggles to piece together her thoughts. She feels like she’s spiced-out on something. The jungle begins to move in big, slow circles. She’s never experienced anything like this in her life. Everything is too bright, too fuzzy. Her gaze keeps drifting; she can’t focus on any one thing. Her muscles feel like lead, and it takes so much effort just to turn her head, to wiggle her fingers. Rey sinks to her knees right there in the dirt. Her fingers fumble over the shredded fabric around the wound in her thigh. She sticks her fingers in the holes in her pant leg and rips the fabric, revealing bloated, red skin around the bite. It’s hot to the touch. There’s quite a considerable amount of thick, yellow pus oozing from the puncture wounds, and red lines travel down her leg. 

Rey thinks of the venomous pole-snake that made its home in sand burrows on Jakku. One of the other scavengers working for Plutt was unfortunate enough to be bitten by one while they were stripping a downed fighter in the Goazon Badlands. He was dead before they discovered the bite on his ankle and by then, it was too late. The poison had stopped his heart. 

Rey looks down at the bite in her leg, at the pus and the red marks. 

_Poison_. 

The word enters her mind just as her vision goes dark. She slumps forward, unconscious. 

* * *

She wakes, briefly, to the feeling of someone shaking her shoulder, fingers gripping her arm too tightly. The same someone calls her name but the voice is watered-down and very far away. There’s fingertips under her jaw, feeling for a pulse, and then she’s being carried. An arm supporting the small of her back, one under her knees. She cracks her eyelids, wincing away from the light filtering through the canopy, which sends sharp pains shooting behind her eyelids. She can make out the severe edges of Ben’s face, drawn and tight, puckered with worry. His gaze falls to her face. He drops his chin, pressing a quick peck to her forehead. She tries to say his name but her throat is swollen and she can’t make her lips move the way she wants. He shushes her. His fingertips knot in her hair, trail down the slope of her cheekbone. 

_Hold on._

She can feel the sentiment travel over the bridge between them and feels the undeniable shape of the words in her mind, and with it, an unmistakable sense of panic and worry, before she slips away again. 

* * *

When she wakes for the second time, she manages to hold onto consciousness a little bit longer. She opens her eyes, trying to force the blurry, undefined shapes and edges of her surroundings into a coherent whole without much success. She focuses on sound, instead. The roar of the tide is absent; in its wake, jungle insects whir and hum and sing their courtly songs. There’s a fire crackling somewhere to her left. After several long minutes, her eyes begin to adjust.

She isn’t being carried anymore. She’s lying on a threadbare thermal blanket with her pack shoved under her head, functioning as a makeshift pillow. There’s a roof over her head, and it takes her a while longer to realize it isn’t the shale ceiling of the caves but made of wooden planks and palm fronds. It takes her even longer to realize she’s surrounded by walls on all four sides. It’s a wooden hut with a dirt floor and a hearth at its center. By far the most peculiar thing about her current situation, though, is the young woman sitting cross-legged by the flames. She's gutting and skinning a small, rodent-like mammal, so absorbed in her task she does not look up when Rey's eyes flutter open. She’s probably in her early thirties. She’s got jet-black hair that hangs in knots around her face and striking, jade-green eyes set in brown, freckled skin. 

The woman hums to herself as she works, peeling skin from flesh and skewering her kill, setting it over the fire to roast. She prods at the kindling, sending a shower of sparks toward the ceiling of the hut. 

Rey tries to sit up, but her muscles are still leaden and numb, and all she manages is a soft groan. The woman looks up from the fire, face cracking into a lopsided smile. 

“Good. You’re awake,” she says, primly. The softness of her voice contradicts her hardened exterior. Rey’s throat works. It’s incredibly dry, her tongue sitting like bloated sandpaper in her mouth. 

“Where am I?” Rey rasps. Her question goes unanswered. The woman gets up and goes to her side. She helps Rey sit up and pushes a wooden mug into her hands. 

Rey’s head spins, and her skin is hot to the touch even as chills race up her spine, setting her teeth chattering. She raises the mug to her lips with trembling fingers. The water goes down with a bit of difficulty as Rey tries to steady her hands, but it does wonders to soothe her parched throat. 

The woman nods, encouragingly. 

“You were in pretty bad shape when I found you. That’s a nasty bite,” she says. Rey’s gaze drops. She’s naked apart from her underwear and breast band. She realizes, for the first time, the absence of her lightstaff at her hip.

“My lightsaber,” Rey says, turning her head so fast black spots dance in her field of vision. The woman places a hand on her shoulder. 

“Easy,” she soothes.

“Where’s my lightsaber?” 

“This?” she asks, brows furrowing, retrieving it from the tack of Rey’s dirty, bloodstained clothes, which had folded neatly and set at the foot of the bedroll. Relief floods Rey’s senses. The woman hands Rey the weapon, and she turns it over in her hands. Her gaze travels tentatively to the wound in her thigh. She needs to look, but she’s scared of what she’ll find. 

The bite on her thigh leg is covered with glossy, dark leaves held in place by thin strips of gauze. The inflammation has gone down, and though her thoughts feel sluggish and discordant, the vertigo is fading and her vision is sharper, clearer. Rey fingers the edge of the leaf. 

“The leaves have healing properties,” her caretaker explains. “They draw out most toxins. I think the venom is finally working its way out of your system. Good thing, too. You were pretty far gone.” She smirks. “Yanipir bites pack a nasty punch.”

“How long was I out?” 

“A couple days. The venom took a lot out of you. You should rest.”

Rey brings her hand up to rub at her temple, trying to soothe away the vicious pounding in her head. 

“Drink,” she instructs, closing Rey’s fingers around the mug. “The fluids will help filter out the rest of the toxins.” Rey does as she’s told, too tired to argue. As she raises the mug to her lips, the woman drapes the soft, brown skin of her inner arm across Rey’s forehead. 

An old memory scuttles to the surface of her thoughts, dragged into the spotlight by the familiar touch. 

_Aza Palpatine sits by her daughter’s bedside in an old rocking chair, wearing a gauzy, lilac shawl and a frown. She holds the skin of her inner wrist against Rey’s forehead._

_“I think you have a fever,” she says. Rey, barely four years old, watches the deepening frown as it pulls at the corners of her mother’s mouth. Worry lines form in the hills and valleys of Aza’s face. Lines she’s too young for. Rey coughs, and the sound is like the crunching of dried leaves._

_“Oh, sweetheart,” her mother soothes, pulling Rey’s small, shuddering frame into her lap. Her light, chestnut hair falls in a curtain of loose ringlets, and Rey can smell the faint, flowery scent of her mother’s shampoo. Rey feels the bow of her mother’s lips push against her crown. Rey shivers, nestling into the safety of her mother’s embrace and laying her head against her chest, listening to the familiar heartbeat against her ear. Aza combs her thin fingers through Rey’s hair, undoing it from its buns and smoothing it over Rey’s shoulders. Through the haze of medicine and childhood sickness, Rey hears her mother begin to sing._

“I think your fever finally broke,” the woman says, with a curt nod. 

Rey blinks, shaking free of the memory, taking small breaths through her nose and focusing on the tangles of dark freckles staining the woman’s cheeks as she withdraws her arm from Rey’s forehead. 

“Who are you?” Rey asks. 

“I’m Kahli Tanal,” she says, not unkindly, and offers her hand. 

“Rey Solo," Rey says, taking it. “Do you live here?” 

“Not by choice,” Kahli says, with a frown. 

“Are there others?” 

She shakes her head. 

“I’m the only one. I have been for years, now. There were six of us. We made a living running spice along the Nanth’ri Trade Route. Our freighter went down. There were two other survivors, but I lost them both within a month. One drowned, one died of infection. That was four years ago.” 

Rey’s eyes widen. 

_“Four years?”_ she yelps. Kahli nods, grimly. 

“It’s a lonely existence, but I do what I can to survive.” 

Kahli begins to peel back her dressings. Rey catches a glimpse of aggravated skin, two rows of puncture wounds beginning to scab over. There’s no more yellowy pus and the swelling has reduced infinitely. The wound will scar terribly without a proper bacta treatment. Her medpac is back at her old campsite and even then, she doesn’t have the proper resources to deal with something like this. Tears sting Rey’s eyes. She wipes them away, hastily. 

Her skin is slowly but surely becoming a patchwork of scars. Somewhere along the way, she became a soldier, and her body is a battlefield. The small, white marks on her hands and arms from countless electrical burns. The knot above her left kneecap, where she’d broken her femur falling three stories from an unstable beam inside a crashed star destroyer. The one on her upper bicep where Snoke’s Praetorian guard had ensured she wouldn’t forget him. The surgical scar on her knee, the spidery, lilac scar tissue on her hands from the electrocution. The puckered blemish on her abdomen, and now this. Whatever that _thing_ was, it had left a decent souvenir and she’s glad she’d gotten her revenge. 

“Nasty thing, huh?” Kahli says, as if she’d read the thoughts chasing through Rey’s head. She’s got a distinct, Corellian accent. It reminds her of Han, of the accent Kylo Ren had tried so desperately to smother. The languid, easy drawl slowly slipping back into Ben Solo's voice.

“Their venom has psychoactive effects. After a few minutes, you lose consciousness. After a few hours, your heart stops. They’re territorial sons-of-bitches, and belligerent at the best of times, but they’ve got bantha fodder for brains, and they’re afraid of water. Stick to the beach, if you can help it.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” 

She watches, writhing in pain despite her desperate attempts to hold still as Kahli cleans and dresses the wound, applying a new layer of those dark leaves. They have a cooling property, like mint on the tongue, and Rey sighs, eyes sliding shut as the relief washes over her. 

Kahli sits back on her heels, admiring her handiwork.

“Rest,” she instructs. Rey is hardly in a position to argue. 

“Thank you,” she says, reaching for Kahli’s hand. “For everything. If it weren’t for you, I’d be dead.” 

“Probably,” Kahli admits, giving Rey’s hand a squeeze. She smiles, and it looks a little like she’d forgotten how to. 

“We need firewood,” she says, giving her head a little shake. She ducks out of the hut, leaving Rey to her own devices. 

* * *

Rey must’ve dozed off, because the next thing she knows, the room is swimming into focus and Ben’s sitting with his back against the wall, one leg sprawled on the ground, one bent. His elbow rests on his knee. He brushes her hair back from her face in a slow, careful rhythm. He’s watching her with soft eyes. 

“Hey,” he breathes, wearing an impossibly boyish grin.

“Hi,” she returns, tracing her thumb over his knuckles. The bedroll is barely big enough for Rey, so it’s quite a feat when he manages to rearrange his limbs enough to squeeze next to her. He pulls her close, one arm cradling her head, the other draped across her abdomen. 

She tucks her head under his chin. He kisses her forehead. 

“It’s good to see your eyes.”

Rey smiles. She’s a lot of things in that moment. Tired. In pain. Probably hallucinating. More than anything, she’s glad he’s here. It’s suddenly really important that he knows that. He kisses the tip of her nose, stopping the monologue before it gushes from her tongue in a pile of bantha-shit that is such a far cry from what she means to say that it’s probably better she doesn’t say it at all. 

She’s never been good with words. At first, her lack of eloquence frustrates her, but then his dumpster fire proposal echoes in her ears and she doesn’t feel so bad anymore. 

_You’re nothing. But not to me._

They deserve each other, the baggage and crappy relatives and butchered confessions of love included. 

Rey gives up trying to be articulate. She fists a hand in his hair and leans in. Her lips are cold and clammy and a sheen of sweat clings to her pale face, but she doesn’t care. He meets her halfway, sealing his mouth to hers. She wants to tell him she’d spoken to Leia, wants to tell him she’s coming back for him, that she’s prepared to haul his ass back to the land of the living even if it almost kills her. She starts to break the kiss as he deepens it, and she decides it can wait. For now, this is enough.

* * *

Slowly but surely, Rey regains her strength. Her wound begins to heal, and new skin stretches over the gouges in her flesh. The various salves and tonics Kahli Tanal concocts from the abundance of plant life in the jungle speeds up the process. In a matter of days, she’s on her feet with barely a limp to speak of. A residual, dull soreness persists, but she can almost ignore it. 

Kahli hunts little ratlike mammals that live in the underbrush. They remind her of skittermice, common pests on Jakku. Rey offers to clean her kills. Rey’s no stranger to fresh kill. The scarcely few times she’d gone to bed with a full stomach had been the days she was lucky enough to trap and kill a Bloggin or Steelpecker. The meat was usually tough and dry but she wasn’t one to complain. She skins the skittermice in sure, deft motions. It gives her something to do with her hands and distracts from the pain, takes her mind off things. 

She’s still too early along in her recovery to make the hike back to her old campsite, let alone crouched in the cockpit of the downed fighter, folded at odd angles and working behind wires all day. She has to get her strength back before she can make such a trek. So she keeps herself busy in the meantime. She helps Kahli where she can. She meditates. She focuses her energy on healing her body and mind. 

In the meantime, she learns more about her companion. 

Kahli is resourceful, practical. A survivalist. She moves like a shadow and startles easily, but who can blame her, after four solitary years on a deserted moon? Only seven years her senior, she is everything Rey was, was _forced_ to be, on Jakku. She’s used to being alone, but Rey can tell she’s glad for the company after years of solitude. Rey returns the sentiment wholeheartedly. They become fast allies and eventually, even friends. Rey knows she’ll never be able to repay the woman for saving her life, but the least she can do is try. If she can find a way off this kriffing moon, she vows to take Kahli with her. 

It takes Rey about a day and a half to recognize Kahli’s Force-sensitivity. She’s strong, but untrained. She reads the progression of Rey’s thoughts, perceives the shifting tides of energy, senses things before they happen. At first, Rey thinks it’s just good instinct, developed over years of solitude in the jungle, but it soon becomes clear that whatever Kahli possesses goes beyond that. She is extremely empathetic, naturally attuned to the Force. When Rey mentions it to her, she doesn’t really seem surprised.

“I’m _different_ ,” she says. “I see things other people can’t, I get _feelings_. My grandmother was a seer. She could see things before they happened, could tell you your future, if you paid a pretty penny,” Kahli lets out a derisive snort. “She wasn’t a Jedi.” 

The corners of Rey’s mouth twitch. 

“My mother wanted me to do something with my gift. She said I had too much of my father’s rebellious streak, whatever _that_ means.” She makes a face. “He ran off when I was three. After that, my mom raised us. She was a mechanic, took odd jobs here and there to keep food on the table. I got older. I dropped out of academia, started runnin’ spice.” Her face breaks into a lopsided smile. “I’m the token disappointment. Every family’s got one.” 

“It could be worse,” Rey offers. _You could be the granddaughter of Darth Sidious._

They sit on a cliff overlooking the ocean, facing each other. Rey sits on the ground, not quite in the standard, cross-legged meditation pose due to her leg injury, but getting there.

Rey has never been the teacher in this equation. With so many gaps in her training, she’s not exactly ready to take on a padawan. She tells herself that this is far from any formal training. Regardless, she doesn’t doubt her abilities. She learned from the very best, after all. 

“Close your eyes,” Rey instructs. 

_Close your eyes, feel it._

Kahli does. 

“If you’re playing some trick on me—”

“No tricks. Just relax. Breathe,” Rey says. She closes her eyes, reaching towards Kahli’s bright pinpoint of light in the Force. 

“Keep breathing. Be aware of your surroundings, your thoughts. If your mind starts to wander, bring it back.” 

“Okay.” 

A calm, thoughtful silence stretches between them. Rey listens to the crash of the waves against the rocks below, listens for a wandering thought or sensation from her newly adopted pupil. She thinks of Luke. 

_Reach out._

“Reach out,” Rey says. “Feel the energy as it moves around you.” Rey pauses, a moment. She feels Kahli extend, unfurling like a flower in sunlight. She dips her toes in, testing the waters.

“Do you feel it?” 

“Yes.” There’s no doubt in Kahli’s voice.

“It’s always been there, like a sixth sense.” 

_The light, it has always been there. It will guide you._

“You’ve been drawing on it without thinking, the same way you don’t have to think about blinking your eyes. You just do it. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Once you know how to tap into that energy, to make an active choice to perceive it, to wield it, to hold it in your hands, that’s when it becomes something else. That’s what sets you apart. The Force binds all living things. It was here before us and it’ll be here long after. We’re different because we can feel it like others can’t. It doesn’t make us better or stronger or even special, it just means we have a bigger responsibility to maintain it. We protect it.” 

Kahli opens her eyes. Her jade eyes fix on Rey’s hazel ones. A frown pulls at her mouth. 

“I never believed in those stories.” she says. “The Jedi, the Sith, _Luke Skywalker._ They were legends my mother used to tell me when I was a child. You expect me to believe it’s real?” 

“It is. You know I’m telling the truth. You can feel it,” Rey says, gently. She takes Kahli’s hand. “Trust those feelings.” 

They make the trek back in silence, and all the while Rey can feel her begin to test her limits. She reaches into the Force’s current, listening to its chatter, reading the changing energy. She’s tentative and unsure, but she’ll get there. 

With training, she’d make a good Jedi. Maybe even a great one. Rey’s blood quickens in her veins at the thought of the job she’d left unfinished. It invigorates her. Building a new order, training a new generation, _that’s_ what she’s supposed to be doing, not growing crisp and brown under the sun on sandy beaches with her hands covered in skittermouse guts. 

Prompted by her former master’s visitation, Rey can scarcely go a waking moment without thinking of Ben. She licks at old wounds, picking and poking at the issue of bringing him back from the dead like the ragged patch of skin in the soft wall of her cheek she can’t stop prodding at. She hasn’t the slightest idea how exactly she’s going to bring him back, but she’s going to try, destiny and gods and good sense be damned. 

_Right now, you must think of your family,_ Leia told her. She has to focus on healing her body, so that she can repair the fighter’s transceiver so that she can send a transmission so that she can get off this kriffing moon. It’s hard when Ben is, in a lot of ways, the closest thing to family she’s got, but Leia’s right. She’s no use to anyone if she’s still stuck here. 

“Where are you from?” Kahli asks, one night. They sit in her hut, eating leftover roasted skittermouse and sundried fruit. 

Rey frowns, watching the fire’s reflection flicker in her eyes. 

“Jakku.” 

Kahli wrinkles her nose. 

“That sand heap?” 

“Unfortunately, yeah.” 

“Really? You don’t strike me as the type.” 

“What makes you say that?” 

“You’re too polished, too . . . nice,” Kahli says, phrasing it like a question. “No offense,” she adds, quickly.

“None taken,” Rey says, with a laugh. “I left about a year ago. Ever since then, I’ve been with the Resistance.” 

Kahli cocks an eyebrow. 

“A Resistance hero _and_ a Jedi,” she says, chewing thoughtfully. “That explains it.” 

Rey’s brow furrows. 

“What?” 

“The general air of sainthood and mysticism. I appreciate your faith in me, but I’m no Jedi. I’m not a hero. My hands aren’t too clean. I’ve done things I’ve tried to forget, tried to gamble away or drown in a glass of Corellian whiskey.” She stares at her lap. “I’ve done things I regret.” 

“I’ve got blood on my hands, too,” Rey says. “It doesn’t mean we can’t change.” 

Kahli falls silent. 

“I hope you’re right, _Jedi_ ,” she says, with a wink. The word isn’t a derisive insult spat from the mouth of wary foes but a friendly term of endearment. Rey grins. 

“I hope so, too.” 

“Where will you go, if we ever get off this dirtball?” 

“Vandor.” 

Kahli frowns in distaste. 

“I’ve been on Vandor. It’s cold as a wampa’s left testicle and just as hairy. One wrong step and someone’ll spill your guts in the snow, if you run with the wrong crowd. It’s gone to the shithouse, the past few years.” 

Rey prods at the fire.

“I’m looking for someone.” 

“I see,” she says, wisely. “Let’s see if I can paint the picture.” Kahli worries her lip. “A recon mission in the backwater streets of Fort Ypso. This person you’re looking for, they’re one of your own? Maybe a mole? A little bit of daring adventure, a little bit of risk, a little bit of lightsaber action and once it’s all done, a nightcap at the cantina in Corubalni.”

“I wish that were true,” Rey says, thinking of Poe and Finn and Chewie, of all the glasses of cheap liquor they’d poured after rough missions or particularly sloppy shoot-outs or that time the _Falcon_ ’s hyperdrive started malfunctioning at the worst possible time because, really, what else is new? They always came out of it scraped and bruised but alive. They had each other. That was enough. 

“This mission’s likely going to be a bit messier.” 

“Oh no, don’t tell me the saintly resistance hero is embarking on a solo mission of questionable integrity!” Kahli says, rolling her eyes. “Is it unauthorized? Did you get yourself mixed up with the wrong sorta people?” Kahli’s voice drops to a whisper. _“Have you gone rogue?”_

“Something like that,” Rey says, with a laugh.

“So, I take it the person you’re lookin’ for isn’t exactly a friend?” 

Rey touches her belly absently, nodding.

“She wants me dead. Let’s just say I’d like to see her buried in her grave before she digs mine.” 

Kahli nods solemnly. 

“I see.” 

“What about you? Where will you go?” Rey asks, pointedly changing the subject. Kahli’s eyes well with tears. It’s such a drastic change from the girl’s dry humor and hardened exterior that it catches Rey by surprise. 

Her smile is watery and impossibly hopeful. 

“Home.”


	22. The Message

Hot, dry wind tears through the canopy and stirs the flyaways framing Rey’s face. Her palms are slick with sweat, and the makeshift staff in her hand, made from a low-hanging branch she’d stripped off a tree. Her feet follow the slight incline in a slightly uneven gait as she tries to keep the weight off her injured leg. The hard shells of scabs cover the puncture wounds in her leg, and fragile new skin stretches over the edges. It itches horribly, and she wants so badly to pick at it even though it’s the equivalent of yelling _come and get me!_ to infectious pathogens. Kahli had seen the dried blood under her fingernails and threatened to bind her hands, so Rey chews on the chapped skin of her lips to distract from the temptation.

It’s a nervous habit, one she’d developed ever since the war ended. The pain is a distraction from the evil things that live in the shadowy pools of her mind. A mechno hand weighted down in bacta sludge; a frightened boy with ink blotting at the tip of his calligraphy pen, shouting at voices in the dark; the scent of singed flesh and lightning forking across the sky, overlayed with panicked radio chatter; a pair of yellow eyes and lips so blue they’re almost black; Ben's hand, slipping away. 

Her pack is heavy with pieces of scrap metal she’d harvested from Kahli’s crashed ship. The freighter was rusted-out and covered with vines, almost completely overtaken by the jungle. It would never fly again. Kahli told her she’d tried to get it back in the air, laboring over it with little success for almost a year before she’d given up, resigning herself to a life of imprisonment on the moon. 

Rey hiked up to the cliffside where it lay, mandibles buried in the earth, massive amounts of rust and carbon scoring eating away at the exterior. A useless bucket of bolts if she ever saw one. She’d wormed her way through a gap in the broken viewport, cutting her arm on a stray piece of broken glass in the process. 

A layer of dust coated everything, air heavy with mold spores and must and the scent of rodent feces. Plant life sprouted from unlikely places; weeds grew in between control buttons on the console, moss coated the worn leather seats and fungi sprouted through the crevices in the interior walls. A flock of birds had built their nests in the upper cargo holds, and they’d taken wing, squawking with indignation at Rey’s intrusion. She watched a flash of striking, crimson plumage as they took to the air, flitting out of the gaps in the ceiling where the paneling had begun to cave in with moisture rot. Sunlight filtered through the openings, providing a light source as she set to work, doing what she did best. She’d gotten her hands dirty, stripping the freighter of its valuable parts. They were old but intact, and they’d be more than sufficient to replace the damaged components of the generator. More than enough get a transmission to passing ships in the Sloo sector. More than enough to get off this dirtball. More than enough to get home. 

Where _home_ is, Rey doesn't know. 

Kahli’s campsite is a four-mile hike from Rey’s crashed fighter. When Rey asks how Kahli found her all the way out here, she shrugs. 

“It’s bhophin breeding season,” she says, pausing to take a drink from her canteen. 

“Bhophin?” 

“They’re these little crustaceans that come up on the beach to breed, but only in this little cove about a few klicks that way,” Kahli says, gesturing up the path. “They’re really hard to find any other time of the year, but for a couple days there are so many crawling over the beach you can barely see the sand. I hiked down here to catch some, and I found you. I thought you were dead at first.” She grins. “It would’ve been a shame if you were, Jedi. You’re growing on me.” She braids her sleek, black hair between her fingers, still smiling. “Like a fungus.” 

Rey laughs. 

“I hope you know where you’re going,” she continues, eyes hardening. “I’m pretty sure I saw that same tree a mile back. I can’t afford to go running in circles this far out.” She looks grim, lips pressed in a thin line. “I don’t like the jungle.”

“We’re not far,” Rey insists, as they continue on, picking through the greenery. Kahli moves easily through the foliage, but Rey’s tread is heavier and clumsier, and she winces everytime a branch snaps underfoot, fully expecting to see another yanipir bursting through the foliage. 

“Positive?” 

“Yes. I recognize some of these landmarks.” 

“When I found you, you were pretty far from here. You must’ve been stumbling around the jungle for a while. It’s pretty common, actually. Yanipir venom causes disorientation and delirium. It’s nasty stuff.” 

“Thank the gods for bhophin side dishes," Rey says, with a mirthless laugh.

They lapse into a comfortable silence, punctuated only by heavy breaths in the heat and incline. The leaves and greenery toss and turn in the wind, making a sound like rushing water. Sweat coats Rey’s neck. She thumbs the lightsaber at her hip, keeping herself firmly planted in the Force’s traffic, listening for any signs of disturbance. The old parts she’d scavenged from Kahli’s freighter clink in her pack with every, lopsided step she takes. 

It’s Kahli who breaks the lull. 

“Who’s Ben?” 

Rey nearly chokes. 

“What?” 

Kahli shrugs. 

“You talk in your sleep sometimes. You call out for someone named Ben." 

Rey’s cheeks flame.

“Someone I used to know,” she says dismissively. 

“Ex-boyfriend?" Kahli suggests sagely. 

Rey stares at her boots, wishing she’d drop it. 

“Something like that.” 

* * *

By the time they reach the fighter, the sun is high in the sky. Kahli follows Rey as she lowers herself into the cockpit, dumping her pack into the pilot’s chair and searching through its contents. Kahli sits cross-legged on the fighter’s hull, watching Rey as she works and handing her a tool or engine part when she requests them, but she isn’t a mechanic and does a poor job of it, so Rey dismisses her. Kahli looks positively relieved to be released from her post. She offers to prepare lunch, gutting a skittermouse she’d trapped and killed in the surrounding foliage and dividing up their remaining strips of dried fruit, and all the while she fills up the silences with conversation. She is all too willing to talk, about anything and everything, and Rey listens, gutting the scorched generator and willing it to give up its secrets as she does. 

Kahli was born and raised on Corellia alongside two older brothers. She attended a prestigious academy in Bespin’s capital, Cloud City, and studied Tibanna gas mining for little more than a few months before she was imprisoned for a series of petty crimes. She served a two-year sentence on Coruscant, where she met and fell in love with a woman named Asha Bier. Together, they joined a ragtag crew under Captain Blerk Greid, a Rodian drug lord with an attitude problem, and started running spice along several different trade routes. Asha died in the crash that landed her here. 

“Not a day goes by I don’t think of her,” Kahli says. “She was the love of my life. I know that sounds stupid, but if you’ve ever been in love . . . if you’ve ever loved someone the way I loved her, you just know, you know?”

Rey knows. 

Kahli studies the skittermouse gallbladder in her hand as if it’s the most interesting thing she’s ever seen. 

Rey’s gaze returns to the rusty modulator in her hand. 

“What was she like?” 

“Brave. Stubborn. She had a dirtier mouth than a Hutt with a hernia. She grew up a slave in a mining colony on Kessel, but she escaped during a revolt,” Kahli says, eyes darkening. “She killed an officer who tried to rape her, slit his throat.” Her eyes harden. “She was seven.” 

_“Force,”_ Rey mutters. 

“I know. Can you imagine? That’s enough to fuck anyone up, and it did.” Kahli tossed the mouse’s stomach and small intestine onto the pile of guts at her feet with a bit more force than necessary. 

“She went through a lot. She used to have nightmares. She’d wake up screaming.” Kahli bites her lip. When she speaks, her voice trembles. “It hurt like hell, knowing she still dealt with crap like that all those years later, and I was powerless. _Powerless_ because I couldn’t take her pain away. She had to deal with it herself and I had to deal with the fact that I couldn’t help her. I used to get _so mad_ , because she’d brush it off like it was nothing even though it _wasn’t_ nothing. 

“She tried so hard to put up this facade of invincibility. She was strong and unshakable and everyone knew it, and I had to drown in the fact that she wouldn’t let me in. I guess I had my own shit to deal with, and maybe it would’ve ended in flames, anyway, but I still loved her and I tell myself that she loved me.

“The night our ship went down, we’d had this big fight . . . the same one we always had. I said some awful things. I told her it was over, that I’d had enough” A tear slips down her freckled cheek. She wipes it away impatiently. “She died on impact, and I . . .” Kahli shakes her head. “I didn’t get to say sorry. I didn’t even get to say goodbye.” 

Rey hikes herself up onto the sun-warmed hull and settles herself beside Kahli, stretching her legs out so they dangle over the side of the fighter. She takes Kahli’s hand. 

“She knows,” Rey says, with a soft smile. “She’s with you.” 

Kahli returns her smile. 

Rey draws a steadying breath. 

“I loved someone. It took me a long time to admit it to myself, and by then it was too late. We didn’t have a lot of time, but I loved him and he loved me, and I’d burn cities to the ground if it meant I could get him back,” Rey says, and she feels a considerable weight lifting off her chest. “His name was Ben. He saved my life.” 

“Sometimes loving someone is the cruelest thing of all, because it means you can get hurt,” Kahli says. “It hurts when they’re hurting, and it hurts to lose them, and sometimes it hurts just to love them.” 

Rey picks at a loose thread in her shirt. 

“Our first instinct is to close ourselves off,” Kahli continues,“because the thought of losing them is enough to make you want to run and never look back, so we sever the cord. We soften the blow, so that when they leave it’s bittersweet.”

Rey thinks of Finn and Poe and all the ways she had tried to cut them out. She’d never really let herself love them or be loved by them, terrified of the moment it would be snatched from her grasp. She told herself her distance from them was for their own good, to protect them from the darkness rising in her. She would bring destruction and misery onto the only family she had left because there was darkness in her, because she was a Palpatine, because and because she couldn’t save Ben Solo. She hadn’t realized she’d been protecting herself, too. She couldn’t afford anymore losses, and the logical thing was to let them go like birds from a cage so she wouldn’t suffer when they were inevitably snatched from her grasp. 

“We can’t go through life without it, though. Sometimes it’s better to get hurt and to feel pain than to deny ourselves love.”

“That’s wise,” Rey admits. 

“We keep going. We drag ourselves through another day because giving up is unacceptable. We find things to keep us going.” 

She gives Rey’s hand a squeeze. 

“When’s the baby due?” 

“What?” Rey yelps, nearly stunned to silence.

“You’re pregnant, right?”

Her face reddens at look Rey gives her. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to overstep, I just—”

“No,” Rey says, hurriedly, “you didn’t.” She puts a hand on Kahli’s shoulder, rearranging her face into something resembling a smile. “You didn’t. I promise.” 

“How did you know?”

“I felt it in the Force. When I reached out, I felt its energy alongside yours.”

“Oh,” is all Rey manages to say. Her hand falls to her belly. 

“It’s okay, you don’t have to say anything—”

“No,” Rey says, rubbing a thumb over the soft, thin fabric of her shirt above the waistline. “I guess I've just been scared . . ." She draws a steadying breath. “I’m a little over two months along. It’s just all so new and strange, because I still feel like the little girl on Jakku who dreamed of flying for the Alliance. I'm used to cuts and bruises and living off nothing, but now I'm responsible for this other, tinier version of myself . . . I’m still trying to wrap my head around it."

"I can only imagine what you're going through" Kahli says, gently.

"I'm terrified," Rey admits. "I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to change a diaper. I don’t know how to be that soft presence I remember my mother to be. I still feel like everything about me is all these shadows and hard edges, and I’m scared."

She swallows the lump in throat, giving voice to all the silly little fears that had been eating at her ever since she saw that little wavering heartbeat on the monitor.

"I’m scared the baby isn’t going to like me. Or that something will go wrong and it’ll grow up never knowing who his parents are, that he’ll think I abandoned him.”

She’s crying now. The tears come ugly and hot, and she doesn’t even bother trying to hide them. Kahli wraps a protective arm around her shoulders. When she speaks, her voice is hoarse and cracking.

“I don’t know how to be a mom.” 

“I don’t think anyone ever does. One day, they just are,” Kahli says. She tucks a strand of hair behind Rey’s ear. “You wanna know what I think? I think you’re already a mom. You’re making that baby feel safe and loved. You’re giving up a lot of your energy to help him grow. You haven’t abandoned him.” Kahli squeezes her shoulder. “My mother was a severe woman. She worked her ass off and she had high expectations for her children. We didn’t have a whole lot. She wanted us to climb out of the hole we’d been born into. She loved us, even though she didn’t say it all that often, and I loved her, and I wish I’d said it more.” 

“I never knew my mother,” Rey says, mopping her eyes with the collar of her shirt. "I remember her, vaguely. She’s just this phantom presence in my dreams. She’s so distant in my memory that sometimes I wonder if it’s just something my brain constructed to cope with the abandonment. I just . . . I don’t want to end up like that. I don’t want to be a faraway character in my son’s memory, so faded he can’t remember what I look like. 

I want him to remember the details of my face and the way my voice sounds and what my hand feels like against his forehead when he’s running a fever. I want to grow old and gray and watch him grow up and I want to be there to catch him when he falls. I want to be there for the mistakes and the scraped knees, his first love and the birth of his child. I want him to feel like he can always come back to me, even when he has burnt cities to the ground, and I want him to know that I loved him as much as it’s possible to love a person.” She thinks of Ben and the mother he thought he couldn’t turn to, thinks of the mother she can’t remember, and her heart breaks just a little. 

“I want him to know that will never change, even after I’m gone. I will love him even if it hurts to love him. Even after stars collapse and worlds turn to ashes, I will love him. Because that’s what being a mother is. To me, anyway.” 

Rey picks at the chapped skin on her bottom lip, feeling small and infinite at the same time and wondering how that could be. She meets Kahli’s eyes. 

“His father would’ve done the same. Ben loved fiercely, sometimes at his own expense. He would’ve pulled stars out of the sky for his son.” 

She licks at the salt of her tears. 

“This is the only piece of him I have left.” 

A long silence stretches between them. Kahli keeps hold of her hand. Rey gives her head a little shake, remembering herself, and climbs back down into the cockpit to flirt with the generator and seduce it into giving up its secrets. 

* * *

Darkness has fallen by the time Rey plugs in the last puzzle pieces, working by the light of the fire Kahli had built. She’d dozed off, and Rey works in silence, listening to Kahli’s snores and the wind snapping through the leaves. She starts the generator, praying to every deity she’s heard of and a few more that it doesn’t burst into flames. 

It clicks to life, and the fighter’s controls light up. Rey tries to still the fluttering of heart as it climbs up her throat and into her mouth. Her internal organs pulse on her tongue and against the soft skin of her cheek like insects as she folds herself into the pilot’s chair and reaches for the transceiver. 

“C’mon, c'mon,” she whispers. Her communications system is green to go, but it doesn’t stop the shaking in her hands. She seizes the comm and raises it to her lips. She closes her eyes and prays.

This is her only shot.

 _“My name is Rey, and I am with the Resistance. If anyone should hear this, I am currently stranded on an uninhabited moon in the Sloo Sector,”_ she says. She gives the coordinates displayed on the fighter’s star chart. “ _I am in immediate need of rescue and extraction. Please, I repeat, if you receive this message, I am stranded . . .”_ she repeats her statement, trying to convey her urgency over radio static and so many parsecs of space. 

Nearby, a passing ship picks up her signal and changes its course.


	23. The Escape

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the delay! I came down with a nasty flu last week, which lent itself to a bit of a hiatus. I'm back on my feet with three new chapters in the works. 
> 
> I think we're finally getting somewhere. 
> 
> Enjoy!

They watch the ship enter atmo, thrusters flashing orange and purple. Kahli reaches for Rey's hand and takes it, holding fast. The ship touches down two klicks up the beach, and then they're running, hand in hand, tearing up the shore with hearts in throats because this is it, they're getting off this dirtball, they're _free_. 

The ship is a can; a banged-up freighter, ancient and sporting more than a few busted bolts. The landing gear is laughable. She’s surprised it even flies at all. She eyes the ship’s exterior, the soot and stain that tells her it's seen more than a few firefights and lived to see the light of day. 

As they draw nearer to the ship, Rey unclips the blaster from her belt, thumb roving over the safety and down the barrel with the same, careful caress she’d tend an old lover. Its weight is familiar in her hands. It means safety. It means protection. 

She can’t imagine why someone who’d gone out of their way to come to her aid would start trouble, but she’d learned a long time that her trust is not an inexhaustible resource and giving it over without second thought is something she would be hard-pressed to do. Trust can be fatal if it is misplaced. The blaster comes out, jaw set and eyes hard despite the fluttering of her heart in her chest.

She stumbles a little in the sand, still unaccustomed to the twinges and tweaks of the healing wound in her thigh. Kahli’s hand at her elbow helps to steady her. They slow as they approach the freighter. Two crew members, both Gamorreans with tough skin and heavy weaponry at their hips, await them. The taller of the two barks something in a dialect Rey doesn’t understand. It might be Huttese, but it's got an odd accent she can't place. He gestures at her with his blaster. 

“Let’s go,” he snaps, in a poor attempt at Galactic Basic. “Be quick about it, Jedi _schutta_.”

Rey blinks, affronted. 

"I beg your pardon."

She steals a glance at Kahli, at the hard set of her shoulders and color high in her cheeks and her eyes, like uncut gems, cold and hard and unforgiving. If she were a Loth-cat her hackles would be bristling. 

The Gamorrean steps toward her. He’s so close she can smell the stench of his breath, garlic and tabac and something old and rotten. He fiddles with the ends of her hair, lips pulled back in a snarl.

"Oh yes, you'll fare nicely," he says. “Human females are rumored to be desirable. I disagree. I think you are pink-skinned and ugly, but it isn’t me who’s paying, _pateesa_. Someone out there will pay a generous penny for you,” he says, with a smirk.

Rey's blood runs cold. 

"Excuse me?" 

“Someone out there will build me a fortune for each hair on your pretty little head. Perhaps your Resistance scum, once they receive word I’ve got one of their own.”

Rey's hand tightens around the hilt of her lightstaff. She raises a hand, imbuing her words with the Force.

“I trust you will take us to the nearest spaceport with no trouble.”

The second Gamorrean snorts derisively, beady eyes narrowing. His Basic is an improvement, though his demeanor is just as disagreeable. 

“Your mind tricks won’t work on us. You're coming with us. Once the Resistance gets word I've got their pretty little Jedi locked up, they'll pay me double your weight in gold." 

Rey’s heart stutters to a halt. He’s right. She thinks of the hefty sum Poe would dish out in exchange for her release without a moment’s hesitation, and the thought makes her want to cry. Who knows how long they’ll hold her, racking up the bounty. Who knows the things they’ll do to her. Her stomach turns as she thinks of the slavers and traffickers on Jakku, vile bottom-feeders in the business of trading flesh for profit. The women in chains, paraded to pleasure houses. The price organs, blood, and bones fetch on the black markets.

“You’re out of options. Come with us or stay here and rot. Your choice.”

He smiles. There’s bits of old food lodged in his teeth. The point of his tusk grazes her cheek, his grip much too tight on her wrist. 

“Relinquish your weapons.” 

Rey weighs her options. Her gaze travels from the Gamorrean boar to Kahli’s tight-lipped grimace. 

She could run them through, could have them face-down in the sand, but she can’t risk losing their ticket off-world. If getting off this dirtball means they’ve gotta spend a few hours in chains, well . . . 

She flicks the safety and hands the blaster to her captor. Her lightstaff follows. Her heart breaks to see her beautiful weapon in his grubby hands. She hates the smug look on his face,. He thinks he’s won. 

He withdraws a pair of magnetic binders and Rey lets him secure them around her wrists without protest. She tries to catch Kahli’s eye. There’s a rough hand between her shoulder blades and a swift kick to her shins as the Gamorrean frog-marches her up the boarding ramp and into the main hold, where the scent of unwashed bodies and urine and suffering hits her nostrils. Stains the color of rust, which she can only assume is blood, coat the metal grates beneath her feet. 

A pair of female Togrutas with skin the color of cobalt and patterned with markings cower in the corner, turning fearful stares toward the newcomers. A young, human girl who could be no more than ten years old, with blond hair and fair eyes stares blankly at the far wall. Open sores pepper the captives’ wrists where the restraints have opened blisters. 

Rey’s stomach sinks to her knees. All hope of tolerable treatment by these two porcine brutes flies out the viewport. They’re sex traffickers. Merchants selling their pound of flesh—young, female captives of various, desirable species to be objectified, violated, thrown away. Rey shudders at the horrors that await them. She refuses to be sold like a broodmare at auction. 

“Against the wall, _schutta_ ,” he orders, “on your knees.” 

Rey obeys. The hilt of her lightstaff dangles from her captor’s utility belt. The binders on her wrists are starting to rub raw patches over her inner wrists.The binders care on her own wrists are already starting to chafe. Beside her, Kahli is trembling. 

The Gamorreans double-check their restraints. Satisfied, the two of them trod over the gangway to the cockpit. The door hisses shut. Rey listens to heavy footfalls, a word exchanged here and there, then silence. After a beat, the engine rumbles to life. The freighter begins to ascend, leaving the damned moon behind, though Rey can’t decide if it’s for better or worse. 

* * *

No words pass between Rey and Kahli and the other captives. Rey’s knees ache from the position she’d been forced to assume on the grated, steel flooring. She hugs her bound hands to her chest, eyes trained on the Togruta sitting across from her. The blue skinned beauty with honeyed eyes makes no attempt to acknowledge her presence. Over the duration of the trip, she’d dozed off once or twice, only to jerk awake with a muffled cry of terror. 

Kahli and Rey are pressed shoulder to shoulder. With each breath, her elbow jabs Rey’s ribcage. She mutters an apology and attempts to shift into a more comfortable position, but it doesn’t do any good. 

A cold draft filers through the ventilation system and Rey shivers. Rey, sunburnt and accustomed to sleeping beneath the stars in the warm, jungle climate, observes the gooseflesh crawling over her bare arms as the draft sets her teeth chattering. She’s dressed in nothing but an undershirt and tattered pants that end above the knee from all the times she’d stripped off fabric for one purpose or other. The fabric, once white, is smudged an array of colors from the rust of old blood stains to black smudges from ash and soot and soil. 

Rey lets her eyes flutter closed, slipping into a meditative trance to rest her body and bide her time. She makes herself a rock and sinks to the bottom of a vast ocean. 

She ruminates long and hard over a potential plan to escape. Her captors share a single brain cell between them, but they’re armed to the teeth and practiced in their craft. Rey wouldn’t tip the scales at one-twenty soaking wet. Between the two of them, they’ve got maybe five-hundred pounds on her. They won’t surrender the bounty on her head without shedding some blood, but she’s quicker. If she manages to formulate some kind of attack, they won’t see it coming. They underestimate her, and she lets them, using it to her advantage. 

She has no concept of time down here in the hold. An hour has passed, maybe two. Maybe more. The zygote of a plan is forming in her mind, or some semblance of one, but a lot of factors are up in the air. She’ll have to make it up a lot as she goes along. When the time comes, she’ll have to act quickly. 

She hates this feeling. Weaponless, with only a scrapped-together, cat-vomit excuse of a plan in its embryonic stages. There are lots of things that could go wrong. This is a dangerous game she’s playing, but it’s better than rotting on that damned moon. That’s what she tells herself, anyway. 

She trusts the Force, though, and that thought alone eases her into a state of unruffled concentration as she solidifies her defenses and waits for an opening to slip in the knife. The space between two ribs, an exposed flank or artery or eyeball which leads straight to optic nerve to tissue and brain. She waits for the chink in the armor. She’s good at waiting. 

“Be with me,” she whispers to the dark, as she sometimes does when there’s no one else to turn to, and she feels Ben’s answering hand in hers. She can’t see him, but the inexplicable sensation of his fingers closing around her own gives her the strength she’s been searching for. 

_I’m with you._

Until the end. 

She’s not alone. His phantom presence and the life force of her son cocooned in the womb, her twin reasons to keep going. The rhythmic prod of Kahli’s elbow and the lilt of her chin on Rey’s shoulder as she dozes off. Rey holds onto those feelings. She needs them to go on.

* * *

A jolt shakes the cargo hold as the freighter drops out of hyperspace. They’re stopping to refuel. She hears the exchange between two of the crew members. By her guess, there are at least two more piloting the ship. While they’re busy checking fuel reserves, she and Kahli could, in theory, seize control of the freighter. If they get the timing right, if she can recover her weapons. If they can overpower the crew. 

Rey listens to the unmistakable hiss of the bay doors opening, a muffled shout, then nothing. She nudges Khali. 

“How long d’you think we’ve got before the fuel tanks are full?” 

Kahli shrugs. 

“Ten minutes. Maybe less.” 

Rey nods. 

“We’re getting out of here.” 

“How?” 

“We’ll override the controls, take out the pilot. We’ll be exiting atmo before they know what hit ‘em. If I can get my hands on a weapon, I can take them out. All of them. I can pilot the freighter, but I need a copilot.” 

Kahli nods. 

“We have to wait until they’re done refueling, or we won’t get too far. I don’t want to make any jumps in this can if we’ve got no fuel reserves.” 

“Good thinking.” 

Under her breath, Rey starts counting. Three minutes. Five. She closes her eyes, focusing on the binders around her wrists. She feels the shape of its mechanisms. They’ve got a magnetic lock that releases with the proper authentication. With a telekinetic pinch, she jams it. The binders fall away and hit the grate with a resounding thud. She does the same to Kahli’s bindings. Kahli wrings her hands, rubbing at the raw skin of her wrists with a wince. 

“Didn’t think to do that sooner, huh?” 

“I didn’t want to raise any eyebrows,” Rey says, with a shrug. She unfurls her legs, and they tremble under her weight. She’s been cramped in the same position for far too long and her body feels like she fell ten stories out a window. Kahli follows her to the door leading to the crew’s quarters and the cockpit beyond. Rey peeks through the window. 

“You think they’re done fueling?”

“It’s been long enough,” Kahli says. She stoops and picks up a pair of restraints from the floor. They’re blocky and heavy. She strikes them against the thin, metal paneling, and the metal-on-metal sends a crash ricocheting through the ship, so loud it sends pain shooting through the roots of Rey’s teeth. 

“What’re you doing?” Rey cries. 

“Getting their attention,” Kahli says. 

“What?” 

“One of the first things you learn when you’re runnin’ spice. These big guys think they can push you around. They think they can get more than their money's worth. They think you owe them something” she says, shaking her head, "you need to stay one step ahead. Easiest way to ensure you don't get your head blown off is to make 'em come to you. On your turf, you've got the advantage. Less blind corners, less risk of blaster to the brain.

"Plus, they can only get in one at time through that door. It'll buy us a few seconds." 

She resumes clobbering the cuffs against the wall. Rey has just enough time to duck away from the door before it hisses open and one of their captors charges in. 

“What’s all this racket?” he demands, lips pulled back in a snarl. His piggy eyes lock on them. Before he registers what’s coming, Rey's elbow crashes into his jaw. His head snaps back. He stares dazedly at her for a fraction of a second before his knees fold and he’s on the ground. The second Gamorrean isn’t far behind. He gapes at his companion’s crumpled form, putting two and two together. Kahli dodges forward, introducing his skull to the blocky, magneti-binders in her hands. He slumps to the ground, unconscious. 

Rey stoops to retrieve her weapons. 

“Take care of this, will you?” she asks Kahli, eyeing the felled, mountainous bodies of the Gamorrean traffickers. 

“On it,” she says, grinning. 

Blaster in one hand, lightstaff in the other, Rey heads for the cockpit. The Zabrakian pilot is built like a tank. He bares his yellow teeth, a chuckle building in his throat. She raises her blaster and thumbs the safety. A carefully aimed blaster bolt through the thigh has him on the ground, writhing in pain. It’s a shot aimed to immobilize, not kill. 

The copilot, a man with close-cropped hair and facial tattoos, presses himself against the wall, hands raised in surrender. He’s young. He doesn’t belong in this business. She can see it in his eyes. 

He’s afraid. 

Rey extends her hand, entering his mind. She’s met with some resistance, a simple tug, and then she’s free to his memories, his deepest secrets, fetishes and fears, but that’s not what she’s here for. She renders him unconscious with the clench of a fist. He slumps painlessly into a deep sleep. She turns to the Zabrak, doing the same. She kicks his blaster away and retrieves the weaponry within their reach, should they wrest free from her spell. Once her charges are sufficiently neutralized, drops into the pilot’s chair shaking with adrenaline and the strain on her legs from kneeling for so long. She fires up the engine and begins to prime the hyperdrive. 

“Kahli!” she calls, “you alive back there?” 

No answer. 

“Kriffing hell . . .” Rey mumbles, blood quickening. She leaves the cockpit, finger poised on the blaster in her hand. She descends the ladder and skirts the gangway. That's when she sees Kahli, pinned against the wall. Purple bruises blossom along her neck under the Gamorrean’s sausage-like digits as he tightens his grip on her throat. 


	24. The Reunion

The blaster bolt forms a third eye in the Gamorrean’s skull, about four inches in diameter, cauterized around the edges and smoldering. He keels forward, pinning Kahli under his weight. The hand holding the blaster drops to Rey’s side. 

“Kahli!” she shrieks, rushing forward. She grunts and swears, struggling under the Gamorrean’s weight as she attempts to heave him off her friend. Kahli rolls onto her side, hands clawing at her throat, eyes bulging. She sucks in great, wheezing breaths of air. 

“It’s okay,” Rey says, “you’re okay. Just breathe.” 

Kahli obeys, pupils dilated, fighting to suck in great, wheezing breaths of air through her swollen windpipe. Rey rubs her back, pushing oxygen through her nods, eyeing the dead Gamorrean. 

Slowly but surely, Kahli’s breaths normalize. They’re raspy and wheezing but no longer so shallow. A quilt of lilac bruises darken to violet along the column of her throat. Tears well in Rey’s eyes. 

“We’ve gotta go,” Rey says. “Can you stand?” 

Kahli nods. Rey helps her to her feet, wrapping a steadying arm around her shoulders. The poor thing’s trembling from head to toe. Rey’s heart hammers furiously against her sternum. It was a close call. Too close. 

One more minute and she’d be dead. Asphyxiated and blue-lipped and lying on the rusted metal grates of the cargo hold. 

Rey shivers. 

Together, they make their way to the cockpit. Kahli straps herself in the co-pilot’s chair. Rey’s fingers skim the control panel. She stares at the blinking coordinates on the star map, chewing the already torn-up skin of her inner cheek. 

As much as she’d dreamt of finally getting off that kriffing moon, she hadn’t thought about the logistics of what comes after. She has to get to Vandor. She doesn’t even know if anything waits for her there, and she’s hesitant to run headfirst into blaster fire without the intel on that fighter. She’ll have to return to that cursed moon to transfer the data, once she’s on a clean ship. Once she’s had a proper meal and some rest. She thinks of Finn and debates, for a moment, setting her coordinates for Coruscant. That’s a day’s journey, at least. Plus, showing up on Finn’s doorstep after she’d deliberately ignored his advice and dropped off the edge of the universe would deal a harsh blow to her dignity. 

_What does it matter?_ she thinks, _He’s your friend. He’ll understand._

Rey’s shoulders slump. 

Coruscant. A stinky, loud, clusterfuck of a planet. She really hates it there. There’s too many people, too much grit and radio static, but she could do with a familiar face. 

She’s been alone for far too long. 

This thing really _is_ garbage. The navigational charts aren’t up to date, and the motivator is spotty. Half of these controls aren’t even functional, and they’ve put a compressor on the ignition line. She can almost hear Han grumbling, his voice floating from the depths of her memory. 

_It puts too much—_

_—stress on the hyperdrive._

She thinks of Ben, his elbows propped on the back of the chairs in the _Falcon_ ’s cockpit. She sees him now, wrapped in a silver halo of light emitting from nebulas bursting outside the viewport, solemn and sharp-edged, so much like his father . . . 

_I hated this ship._

Rey coaxes the freighter into the air. It creaks and groans. The hyperdrive’s still got a solid fifteen standard minutes to go before it’s ready to make the jump. Rey busies herself with the compressor, slipping her fingers into the tangle of wires, being none too gentle. She throws a glance at Kahli over her shoulder. She’s still shivering, gaze faraway, knees pulled tight to her chest. 

Rey gets up and rummages around the storage compartments. Her fingers close around the fraying edge of a thermal blanket. She drapes it around Kahli’s shoulders. 

“Thank you,” Kahli says, voice hoarse from the injury to her larynx. 

“Don’t mention it,” Rey says. She takes her friend’s hand, giving it a squeeze. 

“We’re going home,” she entreats, softly. 

“Home,” Kahli echoes, slowly, like she’s tasting the word. She smiles. 

Once they’re en route, Rey rises from her chair and descends the ladder into the main cargo hold. She approaches her fellow captives, the Togrutas and the thin, fair-haired girl. They shrink away as she approaches, but she murmurs a few words of comfort, undoing their restraints. She helps them stand, leading them to the crew’s quarters, draping blankets around their shoulders and pushing mugs of bitter caf into their hands.

They sit on the bunked, thin mattresses. It takes a bit of coaxing, promising over and over that she won’t hurt them, before they allow her to apply bacta gel to the blisters on their wrists. The shadows of abuse, of fear and one too many harsh hands, hang heavy in their eyes, and Rey’s heart breaks for them. 

“They were taking us to Lanz Carpo,” one Togruta says, nursing her mug. Her eyes are distant. “Some of the wealthy in the Core require more unorthodox means of pleasure.” She grimaces. “It is a popular trade, and a terrible one. To feel like you are less than a person, a piece of meat, bought and sold . . .” She shakes her head, frowning. 

The fair-haired girl bursts into tears, and Rey instinctively enfolds the girl in her arms, pulling her onto her lap. The girl wraps her slim arms around Rey, burying her head in Rey’s shoulder. She whispers empty words against the little girl’s crown, smoothing her hair, making promises she cannot keep. By the time the girl calms, still clinging to her, Rey’s heart’s in pieces on the floor. 

Eventually, the girl falls asleep in her arms. Her hiccuping sobs fade to heavy, even breaths. Rey deposits her gently on the opposite bunk and pulls a blanket over her. The girl mumbles something Rey doesn’t catch, brow furrowing. A swell of protectiveness rises in Rey. She bends down, brushing a lock of blond hair off the girl’s forehead. 

“We’ll watch over her,” the Togruta says kindly. Rey nods, gaze lingering on the girl’s sweet face. She retreats from the child’s bedside with some reluctance, and leaves the Togrutas to rest. In the cockpit, Kahli startles from a doze as Rey draws near. 

“Why don’t you get some sleep?” Rey suggests. “I’ll hold down the fort.” 

Kahli shakes her head, stifling a yawn. 

“You need it more than I do.” 

“Bantha shit,” Rey says sternly. “Rest. That’s an order.” 

“Yes, cap’m,” she mumbles, rising from her chair and slinking off the crew’s quarters. 

Alone, Rey sinks into the pilot’s chair, picking at the cracking synth-leather. She reaches for the comm and tries to contact Finn. She broadcasts one of the old codes they’d used to communicate. It’s a Resistance encryption that’s supposed to change every few days or so to throw off suspicion. The one she’s using is out of date, but she prays he’ll put two and two together. She prays he’s still listening to the radio chatter, after all this time, prays he hasn’t given up on her. 

She gets her wish. 

His voice bursts through the static just as she begins to think he _had_ given up. After the gazillionth, repeated tap-tap-tap of dots and dashes, she’d been ready to call it quits, then—

“Rey?” His voice is hushed, almost cracking. He’s afraid to let his guard down, afraid to think the unthinkable. She knows the feeling. 

“Finn?” 

Tears slip down her cheeks. She closes her eyes, memorizing the sound of her best friend’s voice, painted in static, so many parsecs away. 

“Is it really you? You’re okay? _You’re okay_ , Rey, thank gods, I was so worried. Where have you been? Where are you? Why haven’t you—” 

He would’ve rained a hellfire of questions down on her if she didn’t have the good sense to cut him short. 

“It’s a long story,” she says. “I don’t have much time. This isn’t a secure connection. I’m transferring the coordinates. I’ll explain everything when I see you.”

If word reaches the Six that she’d survived the crash, the clock starts ticking, and every advantage she’s got disappears down a Sarlacc’s gullet. 

“Rey, wait—” 

“I can’t talk, Finn,” she says, “not here. Not now.” 

“Rey—”

“I’m sorry.” 

With that, the line goes dead. She slumps back in her chair, pressing her palms to her tear-stained cheeks and wiping at them, trying to tie up her loose strings. It’s no use. The tears come thicker, faster. She doesn’t even know why. 

She doesn’t deserve him. She’d shrunk away like a wild animal in pain. It was easier than trying to explain everything, easier than letting him put everything on the line for her. She was scared then and she’s scared now. Scared to ask for his help, scared to rely on him, to admit she’d made a mistake refusing his help. She can’t do everything herself. She’s learning that the hard way.

So she cries, for Finn and their friendship, once an unshakeable force, slowly capsizing. She cries for the ten-year-old girl fast asleep in the crew’s quarters. She seemed so much younger than her years. She cries a little for herself, too, clamping a hand over her mouth so she doesn’t make a sound.

Really, she shouldn’t be surprised. He has a way of showing up like this, when she needs him most. 

He emerges from the shadows, and her eyes are inexplicably pulled to him. It’s the part of her soul that recognizes him, that opens to him like. The part of her that knows him by the feel of his skin or the rhythm of his breath. By nearness, alone. 

His arms fal around her, supporting her shoulders and knees, pulling her into an embrace. He folds his gangling limbs into the co-pilot’s chair so that he’s holding her on his lap.

“Don’t cry, _cyar'ika_ ,” Ben implores, softly, even though his eyes shine with tears. Rey hooks her arms around his neck and presses her tear-streaked face into his shoulder, breathing in his scent in big, gasping lungfulls, allowing the tears to fall. Allowing herself to feel small, because his arms are the only place she can afford this kind vulnerability. To think, mere months ago she’d turned her blade on him. Funny how things work out, isn’t it?

His hands slide up her back and knots in her hair. He leans his forehead against hers, a tear slipping down the bridge of his nose, whispering a thousand, meaningless promises in her ear, things like _it’ll be okay, I love you, I’m here,_ and she believes him. He holds her like the collapse of the universe couldn’t take him from her, and the silvery halos of the stars outside the freighter’s viewport couldn’t hold a candle to the love in his eyes. 

* * *

She slips onto the terrace at dawn, when grey light has just begun to filter through the windows. They'd spent the night in a motel on Denon, where they'd landed the night before. An ecumenopolis like Coruscant, it is alive and humming. Towers stretch toward the sky. The narrow streets crisscross and dissect one another, and speeders tear around street-corners with no mind to the speed-limits posted. 

Rey sneaks across the room on stocking feet, careful not to disturb Kahli, who’s snoring rather loudly under a pile of blankets on the floor. She’d forewent the bed, electing to bed in the three-foot wide scrap of floor space between the beds. 

“It’s what I’m used to,” she’d said, with a shrug.

Rey isn’t surprised.

After four years on that damned moon, it’s going to take her a while to acclimate back to the civilized world. She starts at loud noises and shies away from the crowds. Rey sleeps just fine on the cloud-like mattress, cocooned in silken sheets. 

The nightmares, thankfully, blissfully, hadn’t come knocking, She was so exhausted, and the only dream she remembers is a good one. She’d dreamt of sunlight filtering through windows and children’s laughter and a loth-cat with a bell on its collar. 

On the terrace, Rey leans against the rail, gaze fixed on an old man standing on the street corner, puffing on a cigarra, a to-go cup of caf clutched in his withered hand. She watches him pull a vial of clear liquid, she guesses it’s some kind of hard liquor, out of his pocket. Undoing the lid, he dumps the contents of the vial into his caf and raises it to his lips. 

A smile quirks her lips. 

It’s a bit early for a drink, but she’s not one to judge. If it weren’t for the pregnancy, she wouldn’t refuse a shot of Corellian whiskey to take the edge off. 

They’d parted ways with the other captives—the Togrutas, whose names, she’d learned, where Baahso and Obasha, and Jaina, the little girl. Baahso, the more talkative of the two Togrutas, assured Rey she’d look out for her, but that doesn’t stop Rey’s mind from returning to the girl like a scab she can’t keep from picking. Still a child and so afraid . . .

She shivers, tugging at the collar of her windbreaker. She could use some whiskey. 

Denon’s climate is cold, much colder than she’s used to. Icy flurries fall weakly to the ground. Blackened, icy sludge lines the gutters. It’s not cold enough for decent snow, and the flakes melt the moment they touch the ground. 

The frigid air necessitates warmer clothing. Rey purchased thermal coats, woolen boots, and finely-stitched, supple pants made of material she can’t name at the marketplace. She’d dipped into the bit of wealth Leia had left her to get the room and the clothes—a couple day’s rest and recuperation. The facilities were decent enough, and the motel’s location, sequestered in one of the more affluent sector of Denon’s ecumenopolis, makes for a suitable refuge. 

She’s sure Leia wouldn’t mind. While the credits were secured under the Organa name, Leia made sure Rey knew that it was there for her if she needed it, and she’d left no room for buts, despite Rey’s vehement protests against the general’s well-meant offering. It still felt like charity. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d somehow become the replacement, the token child, Leia’s new trophy to dote over. If anything, the credits belonged to Ben. How dirty she felt, using Leia’s personal funds. How undeserving. 

She didn’t have a single credit to her name when she left Jakku. _Force_ , she was still growing accustomed to having a ready supply of food and a roof over her head. The damned jungle moon and its heat and sandy beaches was more familiar to her than running water and eating utensils other than her fingers. 

Rey has to remind herself that she is the mother of Ben Solo’s child, the last Skywalker, Prince of Alderaan. It’s circular reasoning, she knows, but it was enough to stave off some of the guilt as she withdrew the credits to buy the basic necessities and then, those things paid for, to splurge on a delicious, jelly-filled donut because, gods be damned, she was _starving_. 

She only uses it for emergencies and particularly delectable pastries, though Leia would have snorted at her frugality. 

“What have I got to do with all that, anyway?” Leia said. _"Take it ._ I insist.” 

Despite her practicality, Leia had a fondness for material luxuries and wasn’t shy to admit it. Rey recalls the elegant gowns she used to wear, the gemstones at her throat and fixed to her ears, hair done up in intricate braids.

Once, during a rendezvous on Hoth’s abandoned Rebel Alliance base, Leia called Rey to her private chambers to discuss recruitment tactics. Her confines were modest, as she’d expected of any war general eeking out an existence on limited resources, but Rey remembers the little baubles and bits she kept on her windowsill, tokens of luxury she refused to forego, even on a barren, frozen hell like Hoth. A large bed with silken sheets unlike the starchy, stiff ones layering her own bunk had stood at the center of the far wall. Most of all, Rey remembers the purple gemstone glinting in the overhead, aggressively artificial lights. The delicate, silver ring that housed the stone, Rey would learn, was from Alderaan.

 _I_ _ _t_ ’s the only thing I have left of my homeworld, _ Leia told her. _It belonged to Breha Organa, my adoptive mother._

Rey shares no such affinity. She doesn’t know what to do with the modest sum of credits in her name, let alone all the wealth in the Organa vaults. The nicest thing she owns is the jade ring Tari Shik had given her in Hanna City’s marketplace on Chandrila. She’d wrapped in a piece of cloth and buried it deep inside her pack for safe-keeping. She kept it for its attachment to the old woman whose one, biological eye had lit up when it lighted on Rey’s face, how Shik told her, with so much sincerity, that _peace is possible_ , how she’d called Rey a hero even when she felt farthest from it. The ring itself, well, Rey had no use for gems and gold. Even the lightsaber at her hip is haphazard and rudimentary, but it suited her. A scrapped-together weapon for the scrapped-together life she’d tried to build out of broken pieces.

Rey gives her head a shake, re-focusing her thoughts. Her fingers tighten around the cup of caf she’d snuck from the motel lobby. She’s having trouble diverting her attention from the mindless chatter that pollutes her senses. It’s six a.m. standard time, and the streets are already filled with foot-traffic. Shoppers, commuters, businessmen and early-risers—the whole lot of them stir from their homes and emerge as the sun rises over Denon. 

She keeps her attention on the Force’s flow, but it’s much too busy, too loud, to focus on any one thing. She counts her breaths, but it’s no easy feat to reign in her concentration when so much information is pouring in through her senses. Denon’s population caps in the trillions, and there’s no shortage of distractions in the Force to tangle with Rey’s head. She tries to ground herself in the present details, in the warmth leeching from the cup of caf in her hands, in the little, rosy-cheeked toddler across the street, grasping at his mother’s coat. He points a chubby finger toward the sweet-shop on the corner. 

Rey allows herself a smile. Her hand finds her belly and rests there, palm cupped over her navel and pinky finger trailing her waistline. She does this often, even without realizing it. 

After they’d landed, she’d taken advantage of the motel’s running water to take a shower. Three weeks deprived of a proper cleanse, she’d nearly cried for the luxury, scrubbing the vanilla-scent shampoo into her scalp, rinsing away the blood and salt and stench, taking care to avoid the still-healing yanipir bite. 

She’d stood under the shower head until the water ran cold, staring at the tiled wall with thoughts chasing circles around her skull. Resting her hands on her belly, she felt a bit of resistance when she’d pressed two fingers down on the flesh below her belly-button, like a balloon with its skin pulled taut. A crescent-moon pouch of fluid and tissue along her waist-line. 

As much as it exhilarated her, it also prompted a flare of fear that curled like around her gut like a parasite. She’s running out of time. The pregnancy had yet to restrict her from carrying out her mission, but she has a hard time imagining swinging a lightsaber with a great giant belly hindering her. 

She pushed the thought from her mind, still deciding if the tiny little pouch of fat and fluid was a figment of her imagination as she stepped out of the shower, warning Kahli of the lack of warm water with a hasty apology. 

On the terrace, Rey strokes two digits over the baby pouch under her coat, securely concealed under the layers of wool and thermal synth-leather she wears. Her breath stirs little puffs of white around her mouth and nose that dissipate in the brightening light. It’s much colder than she’s used to, and she stomps her feet to work some feeling back into her toes, cheeks red and splotchy beneath the fur-lined hood. A bit of Corellian whiskey would warm her right up, she thinks enviously, scanning the street below. 

There’s nothing left to do here but wait. Wait for Finn, for a plan, for a hand to be dealt, for the next power play. She chases away the sneaking feeling that he’s not coming. That he’s had enough of her bantha-shit. Part of her wishes that were so. The last thing she wants is to tear him away from the Stormtrooper Reassignment Program. She hates asking him for things. She hates owing him, and part of her knows if he ignored her message and carried on with his day she’d have nothing to say except _I deserve it_ , so she wallows in her despair and nurses her caf, long since grown cold, and she monitors the ships entering atmo in search of one that might be carrying her best and oldest friend, feeling every bit the little girl sitting on the sun-warmed viewport of the A-wing outside of Niima Outpost, searching for the family that would never return. 

She begs him to come, begs him to stay away. She can’t decide which would hurt more. 

* * *

She’s waiting for him in the hangar when he arrives. Her heart crawls into her throat at the sight of the _Falcon_ descending from the sky. Her feet move on their own accord, scuffing over the duracrete. She nearly slips on a patch of black ice in her effort to close the distance between her and the ship carrying her best friend. The boarding ramp lowers with a hiss and then he’s there, hand resting on the blaster at his hip, brows furrowed and lips pressed thin, all sharp edges and worry lines. By then, she’s running. When he catches sight of her some those edges disappear, and she barely has time to say his name before he throws his arms around her, pulling her into a hug that’s so tight she can’t breathe, but she doesn’t care because he’s here, he _came_. 

“You came,” she mumbles into his shoulder, tears spilling from her eyes. 

“Of course I did,” he says, voice breaking. 

It’s a long while before he lets go, and even longer before Rey can reign in the tears streaming down her face. She looks over his shoulder, catching sight of a blur of orange and white barreling toward them. BB-8 careens into her leg, whistling accusingly. Rey drops to her knees, wrapping the little droid in a tight embrace. 

“I’m sorry, BB-8,” she cries, “I would’ve come back for you. You know I would have. I’m so, so sorry.” She strokes his domed head. He nudges her leg affectionately, brightening up. 

Finn takes her hand and squeezes it, vying with BB-8 for her attention. His eyes, which had been so soft and full of relief moments before, harden as he meets her eyes. 

“I think you owe me an explanation,” he says, softly. Rey nods, staring at the scuffed toes of her boots. She grips his arm.. 

“Let’s go somewhere private.”

They wind up in a cantina across the street from the motel. It’s late afternoon, and patrons gather like flies around the bar. The cantina is cleaner and less rowdy than anything you’d find in Mos Eisley, and Rey is grateful for it. Finn orders a beer, and she gets some virgin, fruity cocktail drink that’s far too sweet. They claim a booth at the back of the cantina. No one bothers them. 

Under the din of conversation and laughter, she’s confident no one will be too keen to eavesdrop. She takes some precautions, though, deflecting any stray glances thrown in their direction. 

“Where’ve you been all this time?” he asks, in hushed tones.

“It’s a long story,” she tries, cringing inwardly. Finn folds his arms across his chest with a frown. 

“I’ve got time.” 

She stares into the depths of her drink, throat working, the words bogging up in her mouth. 

“Rey,” Finn entreats, trying to get her to look at him. “You can talk to me.” 

She recounts her tale, sparing no details. She keeps her eyes fixed on the opposite wall because she can’t bear to read the pain she knows shines in his eyes when she tells him about her visit to Jakku, to her parent’s gravesite, her encounter with Edris Gresher and the ambush en route to Vandor, what she knows about the Six Points (admittedly, very little), and the three weeks she spent a castaway. When she’s finished, she kind of trails off, not knowing what to say next. She takes a sip of her drink, grimacing as the sweetness of it makes her teeth ache. 

It’s a long time before he speaks. 

“ _Force_ , Rey,” he says, shaking his head. 

“Go on, you can say it,” she says, stabbing at the cherry at the bottom of her drink with her straw. 

He humors her, a weak smile tugging at his lips. 

“I told you so.”

She rolls her eyes. 

“Seriously, Rey, I mean, _gods_. . .” he stutters. “Are you okay?” 

“I’ll be alright,” she says quietly. He doesn't look the slightest bit convinced. 

He shakes his head. 

“Sorry,” he says, “I’m just—”

“—processing?” Rey tries. 

“Yeah.” 

A long, awkward silence stretches between them. Finn orders another beer. Rey stirs the remainder of her drink, by now severely diluted with melted ice. She doesn’t know what else to say. There’s a thousand things she could say, _should_ say, but nothing’s forthcoming. 

Finn runs his fingernail up the grain of wood on the table, not looking at her. Her gaze travel up his torso, eyeing the finely-stitched evergreen vest; he looks every bit a well-to-do Core Worlder, and there's this distance between them she cannot cross.

Rey gnaws on the end of her straw and stares at his hands, wrapped around the bottle. She watches it sweat. His fingernails are ragged, bitten down to the quick. 

He breaks the silence. 

“I was worried. I made myself sick. I didn’t know where you’d gone, if you were alive or . . .” he shakes his head. “You stopped answering my messages. I gave it a few days, figured you just needed space, but I couldn’t wait anymore, so I came looking. I tracked the Falcon to Tatooine. BB-8 told me you’d gone out and hadn’t come back. I asked around, but, well, there’s not too many friendly faces in Mos Eisley. I had no idea where you were. Eventually, I had to give up."

“I know. You have to understand, Finn, I didn’t have a choice.” 

“You did. You keep running straight into hellfire. You don’t have to do this alone, Rey. You know that, right? I would’ve come. We could’ve done this together.” 

“Yeah, and where would that have landed you?” she cries, cheeks flaming. “Trapped on that godsdamned moon with me. Or worse. You could’ve died in the crash. If I’d gotten you into trouble, I couldn’t forgive myself. If you died, I wouldn’t . . .” she trails off, angrily blinking back her tears. “I wouldn’t survive it.”

“That’s what friends do!” Finn shouts.

He lashes out, knocking his beer to the floor. Rey shrinks back, eyes wide. It shatters on the tiles, and several patrons turn in their seats, eyeing them warily.

"Finn, stop," she says, words folding up in her mouth, getting stuck in her throat.

A service droid rushes to clean it up, muttering angrily. Finn’s voice drops to a whisper, but his hands shake with barely restrained fury. The anger in his eyes is there, and something else, something Rey can’t place. 

“That’s what _we_ do! We have each other’s backs, no matter what. I’d take a bullet for you. You know that.” 

“I wouldn’t ask you to.” 

He shakes his head, pushing back from the table, face hard. 

“You would do the same for me.” 

Rey purses her lips. Blood rushes in her ears. 

“I can’t do this.” 

_“Do what?”_

The venom in his voice takes her aback, but she’s not going to stop once she’s started. This is too much. The old Rey is fighting her way to the surface. The old Rey wants to run, wants to turn and never look back. It would be better. One less liability. One less goodbye. 

_“This!”_ She gestures between them. 

“I don’t—” 

“I can’t keep having this fight. I watched someone I love die. Every time I close my eyes, I see it. Every time I fall asleep. I’m living with a ghost, Finn! I can’t take any more losses.”

All the fight goes out of her, in that instant. Her shoulders slump. Her head is spinning. She’s gripping her drink so tightly her knuckles are white against the glass. When she speaks, her voice is barely more than a whisper. 

“I can’t lose you.” 

“You think you’re the only person who’s lost someone? _I watched you die!”_

He’d screamed it, and a few more wary patrons turn their heads. Rey sits back, stunned to silence, horrified when she sees the tears threatening to spill from his eyes. 

There it is. Out in the open. His voice is trembling, breaking, but he pushes through, words tumbling over one another as he blunders ahead, jaw working, eyes like stones. 

“I watched you die, and the whole time you were AWOL I kept replaying it over and over in my head. I can’t live like that anymore. I need to know where you are, if you’re okay—”

“I’m so _sorry_ you feel like I need to be babysat like a child!” 

“You know what I meant,” he says, tiredly. 

“No, actually I don’t.” 

“Look, I know I can’t stop you. You have to protect your family, and I get that. Rey, I understand. I can’t stop you, but I can come with you. _Rey,_ ” he says, reaching for her hand. She wrenches it from his grasp. “Let me come with you. We’ll do this together.” His face softens. “You and me.” 

She can’t look at him. 

“Rey,” he says, impossibly soft. “We can do this” He reaches for her hand. This time, she lets him take it.

“Together.” 

It feels like an eternity passes before she finds the strength to meet his eyes. She nods. 

“Okay.”


	25. The Prince

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M NOT DEAD, I SWEAR!! Here's another update for y'all. Enjoy!

“We’ll stick you in a pod and drop you on Corellia,” Rey tells Kahli. They’re standing in the _Falcon_ ’s crew’s quarters. The hyperdrive is touch and go. They’ve got a few standard minutes before it’s functional. 

Kahli nods, hugging her elbows. 

“You’re sure you don’t want to come with us? We could really use someone who knows her way around a blaster,” Finn says, with a smile. 

“I appreciate the offer, but I need to be with my family,” Kahli says. She looks at Rey. 

“Promise you’ll be alright?” 

Rey nods. They lapse into a tense silence.

There’s nothing left to say.

Rey goes to the cockpit, swallowing the lump in her throat. She grips the back of the pilot’s chair, watching the city lights shrinking as they gain altitude. Finn clears his throat, and she turns to meet his eyes. 

“You okay?” 

Rey nods. 

“You sure you want to do this?” 

“If you ask me that again, I’m throwing you in a trash compactor the minute we get to Vandor.” 

Finn holds up his hands in surrender. 

“I guess I had that coming,” he says, mouth twitching. Rey can’t help it. She smiles. 

“I’m glad you’re here,” she says, taking his hand. He cocks an eyebrow, and she socks him the shoulder.

_“Really.”_

The console pings. 

“Strap in,” Rey says. 

Outside the viewport, Denon’s cityscape smears into a muddle of blues and greys as the Falcon jumps to hyperspace. 

* * *

Kahli dawdles outside the escape pod. 

“Rey—” she starts. Before she can finish, Rey throws her arms around her, pulling her in a tight hug. 

“Thank you,” she chokes. Kahli hugs her back. 

“This doesn’t have to be goodbye. Once this mission’s over, I’m going to find the old Jedi temples. I’m gonna build a new order, and there’s a place for you there, if you want it.” 

Kahli smiles. 

“Thanks, but no thanks.” 

“Well, if you change your mind,” Rey says, “you know where to find me.” 

Kahli’s eyes swim with tears. She gives Rey one, final hug. 

“I’ll miss you." 

"Master Solo," she adds, with a wink. Rey grins. 

She climbs into the pod. It seals with a hiss of steam and then Rey’s watching it launch into the inky black with knots coming undone in her chest.

She hates watching people leave. 

* * *

She sits in the Falcon’s cockpit with one of the Jedi Texts balanced on her knee, watching the lights blinking on her star map. Finn retired to catch a few winks in the crew’s quarters. He’d tried to get her to do the same, offering to take the first shift, and she’d protested vehemently. She knows if she sleeps the nightmares will come for her, like they always do, so she avoids it all costs. She’s been in worse shape before. She’d got a few hours of slumber under her belt and caf running in her veins. She couldn’t sleep if she tried, too anxious to get to Vandor, to find the Empress, to _end_ this. Maybe then she can finally get some rest. Maybe. 

It’s been a long journey. A long war, with too many losses, and she’s tired. She’s been tired for a long time. 

She’d found the Texts where she left them, shoved in one of the false panels, and she pores over a volume now, taking care not to damage the binding or crinkle the pages. Of course, she can glean no more from them than she could months ago. They are useless to her, but the book’s weight in her lap grounds her, somehow. 

She occupies herself with Ben’s map, withdrawing it from where she’d tucked it in the binding for safe-keeping. She traces the notes he’d scribbled in the corners with her fingernail and imagines his hand moving across the page, scrawling these words. She imagines the young boy, still a padawan under Luke’s tutelage, and it’s like she wills him into existence because one moment she’s alone and the next he’s folding himself into the chair opposite her. With a bit more worry lines crowding around his eyes and a bit more shadows in his eyes, yes, but it’s still him.

“Hey,” he says, criminally casual for the way her heart stops beating when her eyes light on him. She should be used to it by now, but she isn’t. She doesn’t think she’ll ever get used to it. It's like seeing a ghost. 

“Hey,” she replies, matching his tone even though it’s absurd. Even though she wants to launch herself into his arms. 

“Still reading that bantha-fodder, I see.” 

“Still creeping out of the shadows uninvited, I see.” 

He smirks. 

“Do they hold all the priceless pieces of wisdom you’d hoped for?” 

“No,” she grumbles. “I can’t understand them.” 

“You don’t need them. They never taught me anything useful.” 

“At least you _had_ a teacher.” 

“My dear Uncle,” he deadpans. “What he lacks in charisma he makes up for in midnight plots to murder you while you sleep.” 

Rey looks at him, pained. 

"Ben—"

“I could’ve been your teacher,” he interjects. 

Rey cocks an eyebrow. She slides out of her chair and goes to him, throwing a quick glance over her shoulder to make sure Finn hadn’t picked that unfortunate moment to barge in. The last thing she needs is to give him any ideas that she’s completely out of her mind.

She settles herself on Ben’s lap, hands resting on his shoulders to steady herself. Eventually, they wind their way into his hair, He tries to catch her mouth but presses the tip of her finger to his lips, stopping him. 

“What could _you_ teach me?” she asks, voice dangerously low, laced with a teasing edge, and her lips bowed into something that’s a little bit a smile, a little bit a snarl. He kisses her fingertip, then reaches up to catch her hand, pressing his lips to the tender skin of her inner wrist. 

“Depends,” he says, voice like velvet, like the purr of waves on the shore. There’s something desperate in it, something that makes her shiver. “What do you want to know?” 

He moves to her collarbone, sucking a hickey onto the tender skin there. She closes her eyes, running her fingers through his hair. 

“We need to talk,” she whispers, and his hands still. He looks at her, tongue darting out to wet his lips, and his eyes are infinite wells of shadow and light. Rey strokes his cheek. 

“I spoke to your mother.” 

He tenses, jaw working, eyes fluttering to their hands, entwined and resting on the top of Rey’s knee. 

“I spoke to your mother, and she thinks it’s possible to bring you back to life.” She waits, trying to read the emotions flashing across his face, and for once he’s unreachable. She probes the edges of the bond, searching for answers to questions she can't begin to form. He's shut down, completely closed off. 

“Don’t,” he says, and his voice trembles. "Don’t spend your life trying to undo what happened. I made a choice, and I’d do it again in a breath, Rey,” he pleads, taking her face in his hands. “Don’t make the same mistakes. Don’t spend your life waiting for me.” 

Rey leans forward and seals her mouth to his, just to shut him up. She nudges at his lips, willing him to open for her like that desert flower in the sun. He does. When she pulls away, his cheeks are wet with tears. 

She smiles sadly. 

“Make me.”

* * *

There’s a lot of kissing after that, a lot of hands reaching for skin buried under fabric and a lot of grunts and teeth and bruises smothered against plush lips and a lot of asking and pleading and taking and giving, all without a word, because it’s easier than saying all the things eating her up inside like someone lit a fire in her lungs. He dampens the flames, soothes the ache in her heart, fills her up. And it feels good, because she’s been empty for so long. 

When they’ve worn each other out, they talk, and the talking is like the kissing and like a dance, or a war. His lips are properly kiss-swollen and she’s sure hers are, too. He can’t seem to keep his eyes from flicking to them with that look he gets, like he’s been starved his whole life. 

They talk about everything and nothing at all. He tells her about his childhood on Chandrila, about the sea, and the gardens, about the model starships he collected as a kid. Han brought them home from different places he visited when he’d been gone for too long. The toys functioned as an olive branch of sorts; as he got older the collection grew, and as it grew, it became a less and less effective method of pacifying him. The model of Snap Wexley’s X-wing that sat on his bedside table paled in comparison to the real deal: the father who was never around, who came home smelling like tabac and booze and a stranger’s perfume, who broke one too many pinky promises. 

He tells her about the banquets and dinner parties he’d attended with his mother if she succeeded in dragging him there, kicking and screaming, and the senators and he’d met, the hands and asses he’d kissed because he was Leia’s son, because he was the Prince of Alderaan. He tells her about the droids who raised him when his father was away and his mother was busy with her second child: the New Republic in its golden age. 

He tells her about the kids in the neighborhood he used to play with, until their parents caught wind of the rumors concerning his bloodline. After that, they weren’t too keen to set up many playdates. He heard the whispers behind doors left ajar, his parent’s hushed tones and the sad, adult smiles shared between them, the worry etching lines in his mother’s face that she was too young for, knowing he was to blame for those lines and that smile, the sadness that clung to her. He was sensitive, he felt too much. He jumped at his own shadow, and he heard voices in the dark and in his head. 

He tells her about the girl he kissed when he was eleven and training under Luke. He can't remember her name. He tells her about his family’s frequent vacations to Naboo, about the storybooks his mother used to read to him as a child, about the times his father took him flying and let him sit on his lap while he piloted and he felt, for once in his life, free from Palpatine’s shadow. 

He tells her about the good and the bad, and she hangs onto every word, drawing constellations into the lines of his palms as he talks. He labors over his words, so very far away from her, but the hand up the back of her shirt, drawing light circles over the small of her back, grounds him. This moment feels like a gift. They’ve been talking for hours without interruption, without a war to fight. It’s a bittersweet thing, and she can’t enjoy it because she’s dreading the moment it will end. But it doesn’t, and she lets him talk and his words fill her up just as easily as his kisses, and when he trails off, thumbing the pulse that beats at her wrist like he always does, because he needs to reassure himself of her vitality, she bares her soul to him in turn. 

She tells him about the desert, about the men smelling of cigarra smoke and grease who’d tried to take pieces of her for themselves, about the Blobfish, about his tendency to skimp on portions and his affinity for violence. She tells him about the time she’d broken her leg after she fell three stories from a misplaced foothold and about the dust storms that lasted for weeks and about the simulation she’d built to teach herself to pilot, about the first time she’d ever been drunk (a merchant had traded her a flask of Corellian whiskey for a rusted-out power convertor), and the day she’d found Dosmit Raeh’s helmet half-buried in the sand. She tells him about Finn’s trust and Rose’s kindness and Poe’s humor. 

When they’ve exhausted their tragedies, they fall silent, and perhaps more passes between them in the silence than could ever pass between them in words, and it feels like peace. It feels like the first time in ages she can finally breathe. 

* * *

She steps off the loading ramp and her feet sink in wet sand. Her insides squirm. She doesn’t want to be here. Anywhere but here. She brings her hand to her face, shielding her eyes from the sun’s white glare, staring at the waves scoring against the rocks. Finn’s heavy hand settles on her shoulder, startling her from her thoughts. She meets his eyes, every fiber hardening with resolve. Her hand clutches tight across her belly.

“Ready?” Finn asks. 

She nods. 

“Let’s go.” 

They leave the _Falcon_ where they’d landed her on an expanse of pale sand and head to the jungle with BB-8 in tow. He tears after them with a cry of indignation, barking a string of quips and beeps, complaining about the sand.

The hike through the jungle is slow-going. The yanipir bite in her thigh still hinders her range of motion, and every shift in the foliage or broken twig freezes Rey in her tracks, expecting to find another one of the great, lizard-like beasts charging through the brush, and the thought does nothing to keep her at ease. She probes the surrounding web of energy for potential threats, trying to keep her footsteps light, careful not to disturb the surrounding greenery for fear of making too much noise.

Her efforts are wasted, however. Finn stomps through the jungle, following a pace or two behind her with a heavy, uneven tread, breaking as many twigs as humanly possible and a couple more for a good measure. At this rate, he’ll wake the dead and a hibernating rancor with all the noise he’s making, and every heavy footfall nearly unzips her skin, every nerve on edge. It doesn’t take long before her panic gives way to frustration. 

“Could you be any louder?” she hisses, eyes flashing. A sheen of sweat coats Finn’s face. He licks his lips, blinking as the salt drips into his eyes, cheeks and ears reddening. 

“Sorry. I thought I was being quiet.” 

“Just . . . tread a bit lighter,” she suggests, “we don’t know what’s out here, waiting for a snack.” She grimaces, gesturing to her leg. “They already have a taste for flesh.” 

BB-8 beeps fearfully, rolling his head back to focus his photo-receptive lens on the surrounding trees. She softens, kneeling and resting a palm on his domed head. 

“Don’t worry,” she soothes the little droid, “we’ll protect you, if anything happens." She doubts the droid needs protecting. She's seen what he can do with his welding torch. "Besides, we’re almost there. It’s about a mile inland. It shouldn’t take long.” 

BB-8 chirps affirmatively. Rey straightens, turning in the direction of the downed fighter. Finn falls into step beside her, quieter now, and more careful in his movements. As they walk, Rey keeps her attention focused on the Force’s traffic. In the midday heat, very few creatures are stirring, with the exception of a few, green lizards sunning themselves on a shelf of rock and a flock of birds feathered with bright plumage flitting about the canopy. 

Her mind begins to drift. The heat and sweat and dehydration jumble her thoughts, and her attention doesn’t hold one subject for long. She wonders vaguely if Jaina, the child she’d met in the belly of the traffickers’ old freighter, is alright, if Bhaaso had kept her promise to watch over her. She wonders if Kahli found her family and replays Elijah’s words in her head, though they’d faded somewhat in her memory. 

_The child you carry . . . the Empress_ _has seen what he will become. He will bring death and destruction. He must die._

Her throat tightens. A shiver cuts through Rey’s body, despite the heat. The Empress was a Force user, apparently well-hidden, because Rey hadn’t sensed the rise of a powerful opposite, despite her efforts to find her. She’d foreseen destruction at the hands of the son Rey carries in her womb.

Rey had chewed over and over this in her hand with no real end to that particular knot or ease to her anxieties. Her son was a child of the Force, the product of two powerful bloodlines with bloody histories wrapped in cosmic strife, one steeped in darkness and the other in light. The last time a prophesied prince, a Chosen One, had been born, it had led to decades of misery in the wake of the greatest dark Empire the galaxy had ever seen.

She thinks of the boy training under Luke, the shadows in his eyes he was too young for, targeted by dark forces because of the potential of his bloodline, trapped, manipulated, tormented, feared by his own parents . . . 

_No_. Every cell in her body rebels so violently against the idea that a physical wave of nausea washes over her. Leia’s words chase circles around her skull. 

_I pray you never know what it feels like to fear your own child._

No. She won’t let history repeat itself. She won’t let their son fall through the cracks between them, and she won't let fear trump the love she has for her little family. She won’t make Leia’s same mistakes. If things go according to plan, if the tides turn in her favor, if she makes it out of this alive and if she manages to cheat death a second time, then maybe everything will be alright. Maybe she won’t have to do this alone. Maybe her son will grow up knowing who his father is, knowing he’s loved, knowing he’d never be alone as long as there was breath in her body. 

She touches her belly absently. Finn’s eyes travel to her navel and flit away again. She catches the edges of thoughts he's trying desperately to keep to himself and failing. A spike of incredulity, disapproval. She understands it’s a lot to process, that she’d dropped the baby bombshell on him and then packed her bags, that there’s been a lot to work through and so little time to work through it. She tries her best to understand, to put herself in his shoes. He doesn’t understand why she’s continuing with the pregnancy, doesn’t trust her judgement in potential suitors. In his mind, Ben Solo is still the Kylo Ren who burned villages of innocents to the ground. She understands how hard it must be to try to paper over that image. He has his reservations, sure, but Rey can't muster up the energy to care. 

She loves Ben. Present tense. 

“Any morning sickness?” he asks, tentatively. It’s an olive branch. A small one, a little flimsy, but she’ll take it. 

“Sometimes. It hasn’t been unbearable. I rarely vomit. There’s a constant, nauseous feeling that starts in the early evenings, or when I smell certain smells, or when I eat something the baby decides he doesn’t like.” 

Finn shakes his head. 

“I can’t believe it,” he says lowly. 

“I feel like we’re just kids, and now . . .” he shakes his head. “Now you’re going to have this tiny human running around. It’s crazy. It’s absolutely crazy.” 

“I know,” Rey manages weakly. 

“Have you picked a name yet?"

“I haven’t thought about it,” she lies. 

They fall silent, though the lapse isn’t entirely uncomfortable. He reaches for her hand, and she lets him take it. She squeezes it, thoughts returning to the journey ahead. She attempts to puzzle out their course of action. The intelligence saved in the fighter’s database will give her some hint at the best plan of attack, she _hopes_. She cannot expect to win this fight if she goes in completely blind, and underestimating her enemy would be a dangerous, possibly fatal, misstep. 

She tries to put the thought out of her mind as the ground slopes in a sharp decline and the chuckle of the stream nearby grows louder. She calls up images of Chandrila’s oceans and gardens, the bustling marketplace and the little boy with a shock of black hair, lining up little toy starships and stormtrooper figures on the terrace. It's a strange, shared plane that transcends space and time. He'd built her a palace out of memory, only the best ones, and she's pleased to find she can visit whenever she wants. It's one of the vaults he'd opened for her. A refuge. A gift. She sees it all as if she's looking through his eyes, feels the sunshine on his face as if it were her own, sees the insects lighting on the orange petals of the potted flowers by the front door, hears Han call him for dinner. It’s a welcome distraction from the nerves gnawing at her heart. 


	26. The Manifesto

Rey kneels by the control panel of the downed fighter beside BB-8, waiting for the data transfer to complete. Finn sits on the sun-warped hull, drumming an irregular beat with his fingertips. He’s humming a tune she doesn’t recognize. Far from a pleasing melody, it drives nails into her already aching skull. She has half a mind to throw a carefully-aimed object at his head. The nearest broken ship component would do, and luckily enough, the floor is littered with unused parts. She supposes that’s one of her toxic traits: her workspace is never tidy. 

BB-8 chirps, fixing his photoreceptor on her, letting her know the transfer is almost complete. She smiles, patting his head. 

“Good. The sooner the better. I’ve had enough of this dirtball.” 

She fishes a canteen of water out of Finn’s pack and tips it back, hoping to rid herself of the headache drumming behind her eyes so deep it’s making her teeth ache. She’d appreciate some mild painkillers to help it along, but the medpac is back on the _Falcon._ A stupid oversight on her part, one that could cost her. Rey just hopes they make it out of this damned jungle without running into something with one too many teeth. Even a sprained ankle could set them back a day or two, and she prays to every deity she can think of that they make it back in one piece. 

Every minute wasted is another opportunity for one of the Empress’s knights to drive a blade through her belly. Every snapped twig is an invitation for something unfriendly to pick them off, one by one. Her fingers tighten around the lightstaff at her hip. She swallows hard, turning her attention to the control panel, where the percentage on the database transfer ticks upward, much too slowly for her liking. 

She turns to BB-8, looking at him with soft eyes. 

“I’m sorry I left you on Tatooine,” she says, reaching to adjust his antenna, which she assumed had bent in an encounter with a low-hanging branch during their hike the jungle. “I got into a tight spot. I couldn’t come back for you.”

BB-8 lets out a string of pleasant chirps, letting her know he forgives her, that it’s already forgotten. She smiles, fiddling with the antennae. She glances out of the fighter’s broken viewport. She thinks she sees someone standing among the shadows, just outside the viewport, almost sure it's Ben. When she blinks, he’s gone. She draws a stuttering breath. 

There are too many ghosts in this place. 

BB-8 beeps a soft inquiry, butting her elbow. 

“It’s nothing,” she assures him, reattaching his antenna. 

The control panel pings. The data transfer is complete. 

* * *

  
  


They make it back to the _Falcon_ without a scrape. Finn takes the pilot’s seat and maneuvers them into atmo while Rey uploads the data files from BB-8’s program onto Finn's personal datapad. She scans the seemingly endless string of data, disregarding the codes and transcripts that are meaningless to her until she finds something of interest. 

She locates a series of dispatches and data logs that span the last four standard months or so. The fighter hadn’t traveled far or often, and its navigational charts are limited to the Mid Rim, but with a bit of digging, she manages to find coordinates for a location on Vandor. Rey blows out a breath, sitting back in her chair. It’s their base, she’s sure of it. 

Something told her Elijah hadn’t been lying, crazy enough as she was to trust that instinct, and she was right. She holds the proof in her hands. She has a destination, but there’s still an alarming number of gaps in her knowledge. She wants to know her enemy inside and out, for fear of over or underestimating her advantage, her chances of getting out of this alive. She can’t afford any risks, doesn’t have a margin for error. 

She’d known Ben inside and out, knew his fears, his desires, knew how to hit where it hurt. Then again, they hadn’t exactly been enemies, had they? Not really. The trouble was, he knew the same about her. He knew how to target his words to make her bleed, but he knew how to do just the opposite, too. Knew how to make her feel like she mattered, like she belonged. Sometimes it scared her to share such an intimate connection with someone she’d wanted so desperately to excise from herself. But then it had grown, changed. Become something more. 

Once again, the cruel irony strikes her. They weren’t really enemies, and out of all the times they'd fought, the only real blow he'd ever landed had hit home the moment he decided her life was more important than his own. 

She gives her head a shake, pushing him from her mind for the time being, and returns to her task, sifting through the data. She finds the transponder codes linked to some heavier crafts. They’re the same class of dreadnoughts and star destroyers used by the Empire and later, First Order. A heavy pit of dread settles in her stomach. _So they have a fleet._ The image of those thousands of ships rising from the surface of Exegol flashes behind her eyelids. The burning flesh, the lightning, the X-wings and civilian crafts hurtling towards the ground at breakneck speed, exploding in a cloud of flame and debris. She grips the arm of her chair, knuckles bleached against the worn-away synthleather. 

“You okay?” Finn asks, concern tainting the edges of his voice as his eyes rise from the starchart he’s examining to rest on her ashy face. She nods dumbly. 

“They have a fleet.” 

“How? Poe’s heading an eradication and defense operation to eliminate the last of the First Order’s resources. We would’ve detected it.” 

“It’s not First Order.” 

“What is it, then?” 

“They call themselves the Six Points. A ragtag band of extremists and vigilantes, I assumed. But they've got a _fleet_ ,” Rey says, worrying her lip. "It doesn’t make sense.” 

Her mind reels. She pinches the bridge of her nose. 

“Where are the credits coming from? How can they fund something of this scale? And if they do have access to this caliber of weaponry, why don’t we know about it? And why not attack, why not wipe out the New Republic while the galaxy is still picking up its pieces after the war?” 

“I dunno,” Finn says, scratching absently at the stubble lining his jaw. “Maybe they’re waiting.” 

“Waiting for what?” 

“The right time.” 

Rey stares out the viewport, watching a cluster of space debris drift idly by, wrestling with the thick, black snake of panic currently digesting her internal organs. 

“Did you find anything else?” 

“Some coordinates for a location on Vandor. Could be their base. Not much else.” 

Finn shakes his head.

“Kriffing hell.” 

Rey nods. She couldn’t have expressed her sentiments any better.

“Gimme that,” he says, reaching for the datapad. "I want to see if I can find anything." 

“By all means.” 

He flicks through the data. She watches his teeth graze the chapped skin of his bottom lip, watches it bleed. She draws another shaky breath, though it's hard to get much air. The cockpit is beginning to spin along with her racing thoughts. She excuses herself to the refresher and locks the door, gripping the sink with both hands. She counts her breaths, forcing herself into some semblance of composure. When her breathing evens out, somewhat, she plops herself on the toilet seat and stares at the wall, trying to wrap her head around the happaborian crapload of information she just received. 

They have a fleet. A ghost fleet, perhaps. It had somehow slipped past the Resistance's surveillance undetected. The question is, how? And where is it? Hiding in the Unknown Regions, waiting to bring all hell down on the very Republic she’d _literally_ given her life to protect. 

How did she have any chance of getting within range of her target without getting mowed down by a dreadnought? 

“Rey?” asks Finn, voice muffled through the door. It's followed by three, sharp raps. “You alive in there?” 

“Yeah,” she replies, managing to keep her voice steady. “I’ll be out in a minute.” 

“Is it, y’know . . . baby stuff?” he asks, albeit rather shyly. 

Rey rolls her eyes. 

“No, Finn, I am not currently vomiting my guts out, thanks for asking.” 

“No problem.” 

_“Moof-milker_ ,” Rey mutters

“What?”

“What?” 

There’s a pause. Rey waits to hear his footsteps trailing away from the ‘fresher, but there’s silence.

“What do you want, Finn?” she asks tiredly. 

“I . . . I think you should see this,” he says. 

“Oh, great,” Rey grumbles, unlocking the door. “If it’s anything like that time Poe flashed his—”

Finn cuts her off, face hardening.

“They’re killing Force sensitives.” 

* * *

Rey skims the manifesto, trying to wade through the flowery language clouding the very real and very dangerous propaganda scrawled between the lines. 

“ _Force_ ,” she breathes. “How’d you access this?” 

“I did some digging,” he says, evasively. “Some of Poe's shady tricks rubbed off on me, I guess. I’ve got some code-cracking under my belt.”

“Bantha-shit!” 

“Hey! Give me some credit, will ya? I’m not just a buckethead that jumps through hoops, you know.” 

“I know,” Rey soothes, pressing a peck to his cheek. She returns her attention to the manifesto, eyes racing across the page. With each word, her heart sinks a little closer to the floor. Tears spring in her eyes. 

“This is genocide,” she says, ashen-faced. She meets Finn’s eyes. “They’re hunting Force-users. _Killing_ them. Children, Finn! Taken from their families, murdered." Her shock gives way to frustration. "How could we have missed this?”

She bites her lip, trying to gather her bearings. There have been too many tears, and she’s spread too thin. And _this_ , this is larger than her, this is larger than getting Ben back. This is larger, even, than the baby. This is systematic elimination. This is Force-sensitives—gods, _children_ —murdered in their beds. 

“I can radio Poe, see if we’ve got any leads. I’ll patch him the info. We’ll nip it in the bud. He’s in charge of this stuff, he’ll get an intelligence team on their trail. Chances are, we already know about it. Not to this extent, maybe, but something like this can’t just slip under the radar.” 

“Under the radio-static of war, it can,” Rey says grimly. “It would explain why they’ve kept themselves pretty well hidden. They’re trying to carry out their business quietly, meticulously, so the war dogs don’t come running. It’s smart. They’re not trying to dominate. Not now, at least."

She meets Finn's gaze.

"They’re trying to purge.” 

Finn’s eyes are dark and hard. Rey mops her eyes. She thinks of Anakin, of the monster he became, the stories Leia told her with that faraway look in her eyes. The Jedi he'd slaughtered. Younglings. A shiver unzips her shin. She rubs at the gooseflesh crawling up her arms. 

“I wonder how many they’ve killed,” Finn says, gaze dropping to his lap. Rey swallows hard. 

She tries to remember what Elijah told her, as he lay bleeding to death in the attic above that run-down tapcafe in Mos Eisley. 

_The Empress believes the path to peace begins where the Jedi and Sith end._

_The Empire, The First Order, the Jedi, The Republic—all are to blame. The Republic has made many mistakes, and not without consequence._

_The child you carry will bring death and destruction. He must die._

They want to put an end to it. No more Jedi, no more Sith. Balance. No more Force-users to abuse their power, no more sanctimonious hypocrites at each other’s throats, starting wars. A clean slate. 

_Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to._

It’s sick how logical it’s beginning to sound in her head. 

And the child. Her child. The last Skywalker. The legacy. Kill that, too. 

_Let it all die._

Her hand rests on her belly. They won’t stop until they have. 

It’s a race now. A race against death, a race to protect everything she has left. 

They’ve underestimated her. She knows how to wait, how to plan, how to kill, and she won’t stop, either. She won’t stop until there’s blood on the ground. It’s the question of _whose_ blood that bothers her. 

Only time will tell.


	27. The Ghost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all are safe and healthy in this time of crisis. I will be self-isolating, which gives me more time to write! More chapters on the way. In the meantime, enjoy this filler chapter in our soft boy Ben's POV!

He floats in darkness and in thick mists. Bodiless. Weightless. Sometimes there are swaths of night sky studded with so many stars and sometimes there is nothing at all. Time is irrelevant. There is no line, no discernible points or order, no way to mark how long he’s been here, to name day or night, hours or minutes. It’s like sleep in that regard. It is everything and nothing, and he’s just . . . there. 

A spectator. A specter.

He picks a thread and follows it. Sometimes it leads him forward or backward or sideways in time, through circular doorways or links in a chain, and he experiences these discordant pieces like the vague edges of memories stuffed in the cob-webbed closets of the mind.  Sometimes there are long periods of dormancy. He could be sleeping, and the sleep is dreamless and infinite. Sometimes he floats so close to the edge he thinks he’s going to fall back through the veil. In this gray area, he hears voices. Some are ancient and belong to the cosmic force, some belong to those still living. Mostly, it’s Rey's voice, and it echoes among the stars like a siren's ballad.

There is no pain. Pain is so familiar to him. He'd learned to wield it to his advantage. It grounded him, made him stronger. At least, that's what Snoke had told him, reinforcing it over and over in tandem with a sharp blow, until it rang like a mantra through cancerous, slimy grip he’d had on Ben’s mind. Pain was no stranger. It walked hand in hand with him while he threw himself into his training until he couldn’t lift the saber above his waist, arms and legs trembling with the strain. After he'd been bloodied and bent and broken by a spider plucking on strings. As he watched water from the tap, tinged pink with the blood of the ones he’d slain, disappear down the black throat of the drain in his quarters, shut away to avoid interruption by some hapless and uninvited visitor. Shut away where no one could see him weep. Of course, he could never shut _her_ out. 

His body had been a roadmap of scars, some old and white and shiny with haphazardly healed skin, some faint pink lines from his childhood and carefree missteps, some purple and lumpy, some cracking and scabbed-over and barely healed. Reminders of the pain he’d endured, reminders of what he was, what he couldn’t go back to. Only one set of fingertips had been able to trace away those scars, to remind him of the home he  _ could  _ return to, but he’d given all that up. 

He doesn’t regret it. 

He sees her when the mists clear, when he puts his hand up to the fuzzy borders of the in-between world he’s trapped in. He puts his hand up to the glass, reaches into the black, and sometimes she reaches back. 

He doesn’t feel the physical weight, the demands of inhabiting a body, though he supposes that's what she sees, because that's how she'd known him. He does, however, feel the torment of the broken bond as if it were a wound, still bleeding, still raw. Even death hadn’t given him peace. 

He sees her like she’s a low-grade holovid, full of loose connections and loose strings, like she’s standing on the other side of a tunnel, or maybe a portal, or another world. The distance is more than he can bear. When the mists clear, he watches. He watches her and he waits for her, and her name is a prayer on his lips and a promise he can’t keep. 

He gets to know her better than they’d known each other in life. It's another one of the universe’s cruel ironies. 

He watches her as she’s torn between worlds on Ajan Kloss, when the loss of him is still a fresh wound and a bitter taste. He watches her blood spill onto the carefully manicured street of Chandrila’s bustling marketplace, watches her hands cup her belly and feels the distress of the child they share. He nearly climbs back into his body through sheer force of will so he can hunt down every miserable slimebag responsible for the attack. There is fear in his heart unlike any he’s ever known as he sits by her bedside, watching the monitor keep time with her heart and waiting for those hazel eyes to open. 

He watches her return to the stripped walker on Jakku and each mark scratched into the wall is another reason to hack off another of that repulsive Crolute’s limbs. He knows there are others to blame for her torment on that wretched sand heap, but they’ve all met their deaths, and in a sick way, he’s glad. He watches her sink into a routine on Tatooine, and there’s a new kind of fear curling in his gut as the days march on and he thinks, with a sinking feeling, that she intends to live out her days in exile on another desert shitball. Her face grows lined and distant and harder, somehow. She’s not alone, but she thinks she is, and he supposes a lightsaber in the chest would hurt less. 

He watches her walk straight into a trap, watches the ship catch flame and plummet toward the ground, and uses whatever strength he has left to rip her out of it, softens her fall, watches her survive. It’s what she’s good at, and he marvels at her. He watches her keep herself fed on fruit and fish and watches the curves of her body grow softer with the weight of the baby she carries. 

Through all of it, he watches. He cries alongside her and he begs her to lift her head, to stand, to fight, because anything else is unthinkable. He tells her he’s _ right here _ , always has been. He won’t leave her a victim to the shadows in the dark he knows all too well. She knows she’s strong enough to fight them, but he cannot bear to see the battle of doubts playing across her features as she tries to decide what’s real and what’s not, if he’d loved her or if he’d used her, why he’d done what he did, if she deserved to live when he was dead and if she even wanted to. If the Ben Solo she’d fought and died for was still with her, somehow, or if he’d left her well and truly alone.  _ I am,  _ he wants to say. _ I am. I don’t deserve to be the person you fight battles for, but gods be damned, I’d burn the universe to keep you warm.  _

He wants to kiss away the furrowed lines between her brows, wants to wrap her in his arms so the nightmares and the doubts can’t touch her, wants to trace his fingers down her back, wants to touch her in all the places that make her shiver, that make her come alive. 

Sometimes, he gets his wish. The glass breaks, the mist clears, and he’s allowed a few stolen moments, moments he doesn’t deserve, to hold her and to feel her skin on his skin and to tell her he’s with her, that she won’t be alone again as long as she lives, that she never was. 

He watches her cry for him, hears her whisper his name in the midst of slumber, watches her press her thumb into the center of her opposite palm, as she always does when something’s worrying her. She disregards cutlery and crouches over her plate as if she expects someone to take it away from her, but these days she doesn’t have an appetite. He watches more lines appear in her face, watches her hands, fingernails blunt and bitten, calloused and scarred from years working bits of scrap metal into something presentable, because it’s a distraction. He watches the tight buns disappear and a wild mane of chestnut locks replace them, tumbling down her back. He likes it, this wildness. It suits her. 

He watches her pick up the pieces and glue them back together, scavenging bits of the past to make room for the future. He watches her when she thinks she’s alone, her fingertips trailing her waistline, whispering nothing and everything to the child nestled in her womb. 

She’ll be a good mother. He just wishes she didn’t have to do it alone, but he knows this is deserved. This is his punishment. He has too much blood on his hands to ever believe he’d be allowed to feel his child’s hand clutched in his, to watch the binary suns sinking, to peel off a white dress and find gray hairs in the mirror and all of the little things he hadn’t known he’d wanted until she’d pushed into his mind and he pushed back, until she’d left him bleeding in the snow and he realized he’d found what he’d been searching for. It wasn’t the damned droid or the map or supremacy or the death of his uncle, it was her. It had always been her. 

She told him she thinks there’s a way to bring him back and some of the old dread started to creep in. He wants to tell her it’s not worth the risk, that they’ll be alright even if they are standing on opposite sides of the veil, that their dyad is stronger than life and death. 

Life and death. 

They’re just words. He isn’t fooling anyone, even himself, but he can’t let himself believe there’s a future for them that exists outside of this in-between state. She needs to move on. He’d rather she forget him, settle down, raise their son, find some semblance of happiness. Then it would be worth it. All of it, all of their small victories and insurmountable tragedies, all the blood on his hands and the death he’d met with open arms because it meant she got to live. 

Hadn’t that been his goal, from the beginning? To keep her safe, even it meant he didn’t get to wake up with her and share lingering conversations over mugs of caf and help her tuck their son into bed. It’s a worthy sacrifice, and he’d do it again. It’s what he tries to tell her, tries to find a way to get it through that thick skull of hers, but she isn’t listening and he can tell by the look she gets, the one that’s so familiar, when her eyes are far away and her face turns to stone. She’s going to try, anyway. He can’t stop her. He is no match. 

If anything, he falls a little more in love. 

He finds Rey asleep in the  _ Falcon’s  _ crew quarters. Under the sheets and layers she falls asleep with her body curled into a C, hands cupped protectively over the crescent moon of fluid and fat padding her navel. She's so small. So beautiful, with lips slightly parted and hair fanned out on the flat, threadbare pillow.  In this stolen moment, Ben eases down beside her so as not to wake her from the dreamless sleep that is so scarce in the aftermath of the war he’d tried so hard to keep from touching her and places his hand atop her two small ones. The baby can feel him, he thinks. If he’s quiet enough, patient enough, soft enough.

He tries to communicate across the bond he shares with his son, almost as strong as the bond he shared with Rey, everything he needs to say without uttering a word. He tells his son he’s sorry he won’t be there to witness the firsts, won’t be there to hold him his arms and to count every impossibly tiny finger and toe. He tries to express how much he loves the child growing beneath their entwined fingers. Maybe it’s impossible to love something that small and insignificant, but this child is his future and his legacy, it is hope, it is a reminder that he is still capable of creating something beautiful after years of destruction and bloodstained hands. It’s Rey’s, it’s his, and it is everything that matters. It is the home she’d given him after he believed he’d destroyed every possibility of having a home to come back to. 

The baby understands, inexplicably. He feels the sentiment behind the words, feels the soft edges of them, and he awakens to his father’s presence reaching across space and time with a thrill of joy, manifesting in little pulses across the bond. Ben grins. 

He doesn’t know how this is possible, this new little human, both a part of her and a part of him. He senses the baby’s contentment, knowing both his parents are near, that he’s safe, that he’ll be alright. Because the love between them is strong enough. 

Rey mutters something and rolls over, pressing herself against his body, her cold foot slipping between his knees, one hand still cupped to her belly, one resting on his chest, fingertips tracing soft, sleepy circles over the place his heart beats steadily. He dips his chin, pressing a kiss to her forehead. 

They’ll be alright. 

It’s the only thing he can think, as the stars drift by outside the viewport and a comm pings from the cockpit and Rey mutters another string of unintelligible words, a bit of drool staining the pillow, crease-lines from the stiff sheets etched into her cheek. Ben huffs a breath, holding in an absurd kind of laugh, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. He eases his head back onto their shared pillow, tracing his fingertips over the spattering of freckles dotting her shoulders, skin hardened and brown from so many days spent in the sun. One by one, her muscles relax. Some of the lines disappear from her brow. She tucks her head under his chin, her soft, slumbering breaths tickling his neck. The faint vanilla scent of her shampoo fills his nostrils, and something else, something deeper and familiar and all her, like wind and sun and sand. He bites back his smile, closing his eyes. 

They’ll be alright. 

He’s sure Rey feels it, too. 


	28. The Train

Rey fusses with the oversize goggles slipping down the bridge of her nose. She holds them to her face, reaching around to tug on the strap. She’s up to her knees in snow, peering through the fogged lenses at the snow-capped mountain range jutting toward the sky a few klicks away. 

They’d found the goggles stuffed in the dusty corner of one of the _Falcon_ ’s storage compartments, along with a few coats and a pair of boots much too large for her feet. To make matters worse, they’re broken in oddly and her feet are beginning to ache from sliding around in them. She’d layered on two jackets, and the outer one is oversize, meant for someone a lot bigger than she. The hem brushes the tops of her knees and the sleeves hang past her hands, but she’s glad for the extra warmth it provides.

Her nose is running, and the snot freezes to her face in a rhinestone layer of ice. Her calves and hamstrings ache from trudging through snow drifts that reach her hip, and snowflakes weigh on her lashes, biting at her nose and cheeks. 

She’s not built for the cold. 

With a grunt of frustration, she pulls off the goggles and shakes the snow from her hood, tying her hair back in a single, haphazard bun. Her eyes scan the blanket of undisturbed snow and slick ice, the mountains rising in the distance like the ridged spine of a colossal, slumbering beast. 

She’s miles from the nearest settlement. She can’t fathom why anyone would try to scrape out an existence on Vandor. She knows the same can be said about Jakku, but it wasn’t like she’d _chosen_ to live on that dirtball. She’d been left there with promises echoing in her ears that someone was coming for her. 

She needs air and stars and space and _sunlight_. You won’t get much of that here. Anything hardy enough to survive the harsh weather lives in burrows beneath the ice or grows a thick, thermal coat of fur to combat the cold. 

Rey glares distastefully at the barren wasteland sprawled out before her. The snow glows eerily in the twilight. The stars are fading, winking out as the first, pink streaks of sunlight break over Mount Vastadon. Her eyes keep playing tricks on her in the low light. She thinks she sees shadows moving through the snowbanks, disfigured and gone as quickly as they come.

She flexes her fingers inside the thick, woolen mittens she wears, trying to work some feeling back into them. She blows out a long breath, trying to reign in her thoughts. Each exhalation disperses in a puff of white.

Her commlink pings. She fumbles at her belt with numb fingers, damning the cold. Finn’s piloting the Falcon, her eyes in the sky, circling overhead and prepared to swoop in, should trouble arise. 

“Rey?” 

“Yeah?”

“See anything?”

“No.” She mashes the goggles back onto her face, holding them with one hand to keep them from slipping down her nose as she surveys her surroundings. "There's nothing. No settlements, no ships, no people."

She can hear Finn’s grunt of frustration over the comm line. 

“It should be right here,” she tells him, trying to keep her own frustration at bay. She must keep herself grounded, calm. Frustration increases the margin for error, and she cannot afford to slip up. Not now. Not when she’s so close she can the metallic tang of blood on the wind. 

‘My scanners aren’t picking anything up. There’s no biological life forms within a ten kilometer radius,” Finn says. 

“You don’t think it’s underground, do you?”

“Could be,” Finn concedes. “In that case, there’s still gotta be an entrance.” 

“Keep an eye out. I’m gonna try and get to a higher vantage point.” 

“Be careful, Rey,” Finn warns. 

“Sod off,” she replies, irritated. 

“I’m just saying, maybe this isn’t the best idea.” 

“If you’ve got a better one, I’d love to hear it.” 

He falls silent, and for a moment all she can hear is radio static. 

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

“I do, too, but it’s not like we’ve got a choice.” 

“If things go south, I’m pulling you out.”

“No, you’ll wait for my signal.” 

“We’ll see.”

She shakes her head, knowing she’s fighting a losing battle. She fights the feeling sinking in her gut, unable to shake the knowledge of the danger she’s putting him in. 

She picks a trail through the snow, toward Vastadon. As she draws nearer, sparse knots of trees break through the drifts, needle-like leaves padded with snowfall. The ground begins to slope downward, and she follows the decline, trying to keep her footing in the damned, too-big boots. The goggles, petulant as a toddler, slip down her face once again. She rips them off her face and hurls them as far as she can. They land with a soft _whump_ in a snowbank several yards away.

Rey sucks in a breath, ears reddening at her overreaction. She slumps forward with her hands resting on the tops of her knees. She presses her torn, dry lips into a line, keeping time with her breaths, trying to calm the hot blood rushing in her ears. The altitude isn’t helping. The air is thin, and her lungs falter, hanging in limbo. She massages her temples, trying to make the world stop spinning. 

“Rey?” 

“I’m here,” she mutters, into her comm. 

“You okay?” 

“Yeah,” she says, trying to keep her voice steady. “Why?” 

“Dunno. I just . . . got a feeling,” 

“I’m fine, Finn,” she says. He starts to say something else, but thinks better of it. Rey straightens, eyes glossing over the white and gray backdrop, finding a steady point to anchor herself to. The snow-capped peak of Mount Vastadon, the tiny, frost-bitten needles of the odd shrub that pokes through the snow. It helps. A little. 

She picks up her pace, not liking the idea of being caught out in the open in broad daylight. She cannot, however, stop the sun in its course as it climbs in the sky. The grains of sand are falling through the hourglass. The tell-tale screech of a hoard of TIE-fighters echo in her ears, so real she finds herself glancing at the sky every few steps, bracing herself to meet the parade. 

Her hazel eyes dart up, scanning the clouds, their bellies streaked pink. There’s no fleet, no incoming attack to end this here and now. The sky is clear. The silence, the stillness, is proof of that. There’s nothing stirring for miles. Maybe that’s what’s got her so an edge. The nothingness is unsettling. Even the Force is subdued. She extends herself into the empty space, reading its current. There’s barely any current to cling to. It’s like staring into a still-water pond, so clear you can see the bottom. 

Rey cracks her neck, rolling her shoulders back. She blows out a breath, trying to gather her bearings. She feels like she’s in one of those holodramas she and Rose used to watch in their precious moments of down-time between recons and the odd mission Leia sent them on, usually with a case of beers they nursed throughout the night. If she were in a holodrama, this is the part where the music stops, the enemy lies in wait and the protagonist, lulled into a sense of security, walks straight into a trap.

“Get it together,” she mutters, to no one in particular. She rubs her arms, still taking deep, labored breaths. It does nothing to soothe her panic. Maybe it’s a side effect of the trauma she’d sustained in the war. Maybe it’s the high altitude, or the pregnancy, or another string coming loose in her head. The strings are coming loose, alright. 

She sneaks one last glance at the sky, scanning for TIEs. There’s none, only streaks of pink and gold, so immaculate and brilliant they look as if they’d been painted on. Say what she will about this wasteland—the sunrise is breathtaking. 

She manages to make it another hundred yards or so. In her head, she makes a list of all the places she’d visited, all the ones she’d like to return to, someday, and all the places she’d never been. All the places she’ll go once this is over. Perhaps, with her son. It’s a good distraction, and it fills her with an inane kind of comfort, dwelling on the future she’s fighting for, rather than the bloody and violent end likely waiting for her. The death she draws closer to with every step, every stubborn beat of her heart. 

Rey loses her footing and stumbles down a snowy bank. A low-hanging branch _thwacks_ her on the forehead. 

“Kriff!” she swears, climbing to her feet, dabbing at the stinging cut above her eye. Her comm crackles. 

“What happened?” 

“Nothing,” Rey snaps. “I fell.” 

He falls silent, and she knows he’s running the numbers in his head, calculating the likelihood she’ll bite his head off if he asks if she’s okay _one more kriffing time_. The odds are good, but his concern wins out. 

“Are you hurt?”

He’s not afraid of her. He tempers her at her worst moments and he knows how to see through the facade of unwavering strength she puts up, because she doesn’t know how to not be okay, how to ask for help. He knows when she’s hurting, when she’s not okay even though she says she is. Nevermind the stupid cut, her voice is like glass and he knows she’s so close to breaking. He knows she’s exhausted, knows the only thing she really wants is a bit of reprieve, maybe a really long nap. She wants to wake up and nurse a cup of caf and watch the sun come up without having to worry about a war, about someone trying to kill her. He knows she’s never had such a luxury even one day in her whole life, knows even if he could give her a bit of peace, she’d find a way back into the mix, because she never stops fighting. It’s in her nature. He sees right through her. 

He knows when to push her, but he has a harder time knowing when to leave her alone. Sometimes it’s endearing. Right now, it’s just plain irritating, but her irritation isn’t wholly directed at him. He’s smart enough to discern that for himself. 

It’s why this works. It’s why _they_ work. 

“It’s just a scratch,” she assures him, voice softening. “I promise.” 

“See anything down there?”

“Nothing but ice and snow.” She tries to keep an air of levity in her voice, but it’s a nearly impossible feat. Her voice doesn’t even sound like hers. It’s dissonant, disconnected. Tired. 

“It’s here somewhere," Rey whispers, more to herself than anyone. "It has to be." 

“If you were a genocidal Sith lord, where would you hide?” 

“She’s not Sith.” 

“Semantics.” 

“If I can—” 

Rey trails off. 

“Rey, can you hear me? I think I’m losing the connect—”

She shushes him. The sound of screeching metal echoes through the mountain range. It’s distant, but drawing nearer. She turns on her heel, whipping her head from side to side, trying to locate the source of the noise. 

“Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?” 

Rey’s eyes graze the mountainous landscape. The clanging gets louder, and Rey watches as a conveyex rounds the mountain, speeding along a slim railway secured to the mountainside and rigged with system of pulleys and cables. Rey ducks, knees hitting the ice, hoping she’s concealed enough in this knot of trees and snow to escape detection by whoever’s manning the transport. Friend or foe, she’s not keen to find out.

The train’s gone as quickly as it came, whipping out of sight. Eventually, the clanging of metal dies away and silence sets in, even louder than before in the absence of the railway’s mechanic whir. 

“It’s a transport,” Rey says, into her comm. “A conveyex train.” 

“The Empire used conveyex transport systems to carry resources before the rebellion. That was a long time ago.”

“It’s them,” Rey says, realization dawning on her. 

“There’s a couple mining colonies on Vandor. It could be carrying exports to Corulbani,” Finn says, but she can tell by the way his voice wavers that he isn’t so sure. 

“No,” Rey says, every moment growing more and more certain. “It’s them. That’s our way in.”

“Rey . . .” 

In his effort to keep her from doing anything rash, he betrays himself. He already knows the truth. 

“No, think about it. Wherever they’re hiding, they can’t sustain themselves in this climate, and this terrain makes transportation difficult. Those trains carry resources. Food, weapons, medical supplies. And it has to stop somewhere. Finn, don’t you see? It’s our ticket in.” 

“You don’t know that!” he shouts, incredulous. “You’re crazy if you think I’m gonna let you get on one of those transports. You’ll be apprehended or killed before you make it to the pass.” 

“You don’t know that.” 

“So what? I’m not taking that chance.”

“We’ve pulled crazier shit than this.” 

“Let’s just . . . let’s think this through.” 

“We’re wasting time.” 

“I’m calling Poe.”

“No! I’m not dragging him into this. It’s bad enough you’re here.” 

“Rey, we have troops, resources. Hell, we have a fleet! They can handle this much better than we can, if you just let me—”

“No!” Rey shouts, fists clenched and ears ringing. “I won’t let anyone else die for me.” 

There. It hangs in the empty air, and for a small eternity, Finn is silent. Her comm crackles with static and unspoken things. 

“Rey,” he implores, softer this time, trying to talk her down from the precipice she’s tottering on. “I’m coming to get you. We’ll talk about this, okay? We’ll figure something out.”

“There’s no time.” 

She watches the thick, nebulous clouds slowly moving in, scraping Vastadon’s peak. There’s a storm coming. 

“I’m coming to get you.” 

She starts to protest. 

“We do this together, remember? You said so, yourself. That's what we’ve always done before. We’re stronger when we have each other’s backs. What changed?”

Tears sting Rey’s eyes. She bites her lip. 

“The stakes are higher,” is the only answer she manages to get past the lump in her throat. 

“Rey, wait—”

Before he can say anything else, she shuts off the comm. 

Rey zips the collar of her jacket over her mouth and nose, reaching for the blaster at her hip. She takes off, sprinting toward the mountains as the clouds overtake the sky and a heavy, frigid wind begins to blow.


	29. The Gorge

Rey clings to the slick mountainside, gloved fingers scrabbling clumsily over the jagged rock, trying to find purchase. She stares at the sickening drop below her, where the mountains give way to a deep gorge. A fall from this height would surely kill her. She swallows, drawing deep, steadying breaths. She’s not afraid of heights. Years scaling the sides of downed star destroyers had curbed that fear early on. She’s a skilled climber, but the ice adds another margin for error. One at a time, she pulls her gloves off with her teeth and lets them tumble down the gorge. With the extra layer stripped away, she has a better shot at feeling for tiny grooves in the rock to hold onto. 

Of course, the weather is a different contender, altogether. The clouds are thick and gray, and a harsh, icy wind blows in from the east, threatening her balance and stinging her face. 

A low engine-hum echoes through the gorge, and Rey’s gaze shoots toward the sky. She can hear the _Falcon_ ’s rumble overhead, sees a glimpse of its scorched hull as it dips beneath the clouds. She can feel Finn extending himself in the Force, battering against the walls of her mind, but he is unpracticed and clumsy. It doesn’t take much to seal her defenses against him. Where Kylo Ren’s mind was a precise, sharp tool aimed at the gaps in her armor and Ben’s is a mirror-image that fuses seamlessly with her own, Finn’s attack does about as much damage as someone trying to break through durasteel with a plastic spoon, which is to say, none at all. He’s furious, and his presence in the Force is a swirling storm rent apart with chaotic pulses of light. She watches the _Falcon_ pull out a wide, one-eighty turn, returning the way it came. He dips and swerves, and she watches the Falcon’s shadow grow larger on the canvas of snow. He’s flying too low, too carelessly, and every minute he spends bellowing after her like a hormonal happabore is another invitation for attack. He’s going to blow their cover. 

Double-checking her foothold, Rey fumbles at her belt and withdraws her comm. 

“Finn!” she yells, over the howling wind. 

“Rey!” Finn growls. “This is ridiculous.” 

“You’re gonna blow our cover! Get out of range!” she yells. 

“I don’t give a flying fuck. Time’s up. I’m pulling you out.” 

“I can do this. Let me do this!” 

“No, alright? No. I’m done playing games. We do this together or not at all."

“I’m so close, I can—"

“No. No, Rey! This is absolutely crazy. I thought you were smarter than this.” 

“If you were really on my side, you’d trust—” 

“Your side?” Finn barks, incredulous. “Your side? All I've ever wanted is to help you, Rey. All I’ve ever tried to do is be there for you, so don’t act like this is all part of some evil plot I’ve concocted. I’m just trying to keep you safe.” 

“That isn’t your responsibility!” 

“It is, actually, ‘cause you’ve done a pretty poor job as of late.” 

“Kriffing hell.” 

“It’s the truth."

“I can do this! Finn, I know things you don’t. This is my fight. I’m supposed to do this alone. It's the path the Force has laid out for me. It's my destiny." And it was, in a way. She felt, more than ever, that a crossroads lay ahead. That the nexus she'd seen in her vision, the Force linking everything together. everything that had led her parents to hide her on Jakku, everything that led an one-of-a-kind, orange and white BB-unit to her walker, everything that had led her to Exegol and everything after, it all led here. 

“I was never a big believer in destiny,” Finn says, and the comm crackles. “This is my fight, too. This was my fight the day you stumbled onto the steps of the capitol building with a knife in your belly, Rey. Hell, this was my fight the day you and I escaped Jakku. You and Poe and the baby are the only family I’ve got. You’re protecting your family. I’m protecting mine.”

Rey is silent, feeling something shrivel up and die inside her. 

“You gotta trust me,” she manages, weakly. 

“I don’t. Sorry. When this is all over, you can hate me all you want, but I’m not letting you die alone because you’re too proud to admit you can’t do this on your own.”

Rey fumes. She tries to formulate a good rebuttal, but none’s forthcoming. Finn goes on. 

“There’s a storm coming, and you can’t reach the railway from the ground. The ice is too slick. You need an aerial approach.” 

Rey is silent. She steals another glance at the gorge, the jagged rocks below, the wind tearing at her back, suddenly hollow and so, so very tired. 

She raises the comm to her lips. 

“I’m coming,” she starts to say, but the snap of a blaster shot rings through the mountains, drowning her words. A sharp, white-hot pain rips through her bicep, and then she’s falling, and the ground rushes up to meet her. 

* * *

She lands on her back on a shelf of rock, ten feet down. The fall knocks the wind from her lungs, and spots explode across her vision. She lays there, gasping, eyes darting around for the location of her attacker. The shot came from above. She braces herself for another, for the bolt to bury itself in her chest. For the end. She’s wide-open, and it wouldn’t take much to finish it now. She starts counting. Ten seconds, twenty. Every beat of her heart, every breath, is the last one. Thirty seconds. A minute. 

No shots. 

She decides if they wanted to kill her, they would’ve done it already. She attempts to move, but her arm is pinned, and she suspects she’s got a few broken ribs to contend with, and something’s wrong with her shoulder. Tears leaking from her eyes and lips pressed into a thin line to suppress her screams, she rolls onto her side and props herself up, back flat against the mountainside. She steels herself, glancing at the wound in her bicep. The blood that dribbles from the wound steams in the cold, but the shot had cauterized the skin around the wound, preventing severe bleeding. Rey presses her hand over the wound, crying out as the pressure sends another stab of pain rocketing through her arm. 

Slowly, shakily, she gets to her feet. The world spins in slow circles. She scans the mountainside, still searching for her attacker. She can’t hear herself think over the violent baying of the wind, and snow had begun to fall, making it difficult to see much of anything more than three feet away. Rey glances around. The shelf of rock that broke her fall to the bottom of the gorge below provides a space about seven feet long, three feet wide, slick with ice, and with no feasible way to climb up with her injured arm. To make matters worse, the comm had slipped from her hand and slipped down the mountainside. She can see it, scattered in a million pieces of plastic and wire, several feet below. 

Rey screws up her eyes against the snow as it blows side-ways in the wind. The storm’s here, and so is the parade, and the only real thought Rey can manage, amidst the pain and panic, is that she really wishes she hadn’t chucked her goggles. 

Flat against the mountainside, Rey rests her hand on her belly, fingers blue and numb, cut-up from the fall. She calls to her son. She feels him, feels his agitation and distress but also his aliveness. He wasn’t injured in the fall, and a sob of relief breaks from Rey’s lips before she can stop it. 

Another shot rings through the gorge. It hits the mountain, two feet from her. Rey screams, leaping to her feet, hugging her arm to her chest. She draws her blaster and aims it in the direction of the shots, opening fire. A hail of blaster fire peppers the mountainside, several feet above. She takes her finger off the trigger, listening as the echoes die away. She squints in the snowfall. There’s nothing. Her attacker is most likely hunkered down behind a rock formation with a clear shot at her head. _Why doesn’t he take it?_

“Take it!” she bellows, brandishing her blaster. “Coward! Take the shot!”

As soon as the words leave her lips, another shot hits the snow by her feet. From the opposite direction.

Rey turns on her heel in time to see two armored soldiers descending the opposite side of the gorge, harnessed and attached to cables. One cranes, blaster aimed for her, and looses a round of shots. This time, she’s ready. She deflects each blow with a flex of her fingers. 

Another shot comes from above. It misses its mark, grazing her thigh. Rey drops to her knee, shrieking in pain. A black stain spreads over her pantleg. She regains her stance and opens blind fire at the rocks above. For the first time, she catches sight of the sniper as he whips out of sight behind a ridge, flattening himself to the ground. She turns and shoots at the soldiers across the gorge. She strikes a soldier in the chink in his armor between shoulder and helmet. He coughs, and a burst of blood, violet in the snow, splatters his front. His head drops forward, and his blaster drops into the gorge. 

She aims for the other, and he fires a carefully aimed shot, a ditch-effort attempt to save his skin. She doesn’t react in time. 

It should’ve hit her. It should’ve struck her between the eyes and torn a hole through her brain. It should’ve been the end. 

Instead, the shot hovers a few inches in front of her face, held in midair by an invisible force.

She catches sight of him standing on a ledge on the opposite side of the gorge. A tall figure, masked and dressed entirely in black, so black it swallows the eerie, white light reflecting off the snow at his feet. 

_Ben?_

No, that’s not right. The mask is different, and he wears a sort of plated armor she’d never seen on Ben, even when he was Kylo Ren. He carries himself a little differently, too, but the figure’s size and stature is so similar to that of the man she loves, it takes her brain a minute to separate the two. The masked figure raises a black, gloved hand and clenches his fist. The bolt draws a straight line across the gorge, striking her opponent with so much force it blows through the armor. He hangs limp in his harness. 

The arrival of the man in the mask distracts Rey enough that the sniper seizes his chance, withdrawing from his crevice to take the shot. One moment she’s staring out across the gorge and the next, there’s the click of a safety disengaging and a cold fist of fear closes around Rey’s heart. She turns, meeting her attacker’s eyes, awaiting the pull of the trigger. It doesn’t come.

The sound of a lightsaber igniting cuts through the howl of the wind, and then there’s a red blade sprouting from the sniper’s chest. His mouth forms an O and the scarlet blade hisses as the snowfall hits it. The masked man places a gloved hand on the sniper’s helmet and wrenches his blade from the body. The sniper crumples to the ground like a house of sabacc cards with a weak foundation.

Rey’s breath bogs up in her throat. She looks up at the masked figure, on the rocky ledge a few feet above her. He meets her eyes and makes as if to take a step toward her. 

Before Rey can say anything, a familiar rumble slides through the air, and then the Falcon is descending from the sky. It stalls in midair, nearing the ledge. Its sides scraping against the mountainside. The ramp door descends, and then Finn’s there, offering a hand. 

Rey throws a glance over her shoulder, but the man in the mask is gone. Her eyes graze the landscape, but there’s no sign of him.

Rey turns and takes Finn’s hand.


	30. The Apprentice

Finn’s arm encircles Rey. She leans heavily on him as he helps her up the ramp. Her foot catches and she pitches forward. Her knees give. He lifts her, gathering her against his chest, and carries her into the galley. 

He lays her across one of the bunks. 

“Hold on,” he tells her, and she does, hand still clamped over the wound in her arm, laboring over her breaths. He returns to the cockpit. The _Falcon’s_ engine whines as the winds batter against the hull. It pitches and rocks, battling the storm. 

Rey props herself up, teeth sinking into the flesh of her lips as her body protests and aches and pains race up her spine. Sitting up, she takes stock of her situation. Bright swirls linger at the edges of her vision, and the sound of the wind and the engine is watered-down and distant. 

BB-8 approaches her, beeping concernedly. 

“I’m fine,” she assures him. “It’s just a scratch.” 

BB-8 peers at the wound in her arm. He tells her it looks a lot worse than a scratch and recommends she seek medical attention. 

“What’s it look like I’m doing, BB?” she snaps, irritated. The astromech chirps, taking offense at her tone. Rey ignores him. 

She places a hand over the gouge in her bicep where the blaster bolt found its mark. Closing her eyes, she directs some of her life-force to the wound, speeding up the healing process. She peeks through half-slit eyes to watch the torn skin and tissue knit itself back together. Rey lets her head fall against the seat, sighing as waves of relief break over her. The pain ebbs, and all that’s left of the would is a patch of raw, new skin. 

The last of the Force’s warmth fades away, leaving her drowsy and weak. She clutches the bench to keep herself upright, dragging her tongue across her lips to taste the salt of her tears and sweat. With trembling fingers, she tends to the wound in her thigh. Her fingers work at her pants buttons, her belt. She shimmies out of them as quickly as she dares, taking care not to aggravate the cut as the last of the fabric falls away. 

Her fingers probe the wound. The bolt only grazed her, but it continues to leak copious amounts of blood, and the torn flesh is enough to cause stabs of pain rocketing through her leg. 

With a twitch of her wrist, Rey levitates a medkit from the storage compartment. It soars into her hands. She withdraws a bacta patch and a bit of antiseptic and tends to the wound. She elects to let her ribs heal on their own. She doesn’t have the energy or materials to deal with them. So, she swallows a couple painkillers and tries not to make any sudden movements, tries to take small breaths. 

Satisfied, she attempts to stand. Her legs tremble a bit under the strain, but her vision is returning to normal and she no longer feels like she’s on the brink of passing out. Taking that as a good sign, she makes for the cockpit. 

Finn barrels into the crew’s quarters before she makes it more than a few steps. He seizes her shoulders. 

“You’re hurt,” he says, gaze landing on the bloodstained hole in her jacket. 

“I’m fine.” 

Her legs quaver. Finn wraps an arm snuggly around her shoulders and guides her to the dejarik table, sitting her down. 

“How many?” he asks, settling beside her. 

“Three. Scouting the perimeter, most likely. It means we’re close.” 

Finn’s eyes darken. 

“It means our cover’s blown. Word’s probably reached the base by now. We lost the element of surprise. They know we’re here. They know who you are, and why you’ve come. They’ll kill you on sight if they get the chance.” 

Rey frowns. 

“Nothing’s changed, then.” Her voice is leaden, certain. “She wants me dead so that her deluded visions don’t come to fruition. She thinks my son is going to grow up to bring about the galaxy’s doom. She thinks she’s dodging a bullet, killing me. She’s always had a price on my head."

Rey chews the inside of her cheek.

"I have to face her. I have to kill her before she kills me.”

“You could’ve had help. If you’d waited. If we’d taken time to plan instead of running around like headless bloggins!” 

It’s hard to miss the bitterness in his voice. 

“It wouldn’t have made a difference.” 

“Oh, it wouldn’t?” Finn says, incredulous. He folds his arms across his chest. “Look. I’m just glad you’re alive. That’s my main concern right now. We’ll figure out the rest.”

“There’s something else,” Rey says. “I had . . . I had help. On the mountain, there was a man. He saved my life.” 

Finn frowns. 

“Who was it?” 

“I dunno. I couldn’t see his face. He was wearing a mask.” 

“That doesn’t make any sense.” 

Rey shrugs. 

“It’s what I saw.” 

A silence falls between them. Rey attempts to stand, but Finn’s hand on her shoulder halts her. 

“You should rest.” 

“There’s no time. I need to get on a train.” She looks at Finn.

“Please, Finn,” Rey says. Finn avoids her gaze.

“I can’t do this without you. I realize that. I can finish this, Finn. If you trust me.” She takes his hand. “We’ll be sipping wine in Corulbani by sunset, and this’ll be over.”

Finn shakes his head. 

“It’s too dangerous.” He withdraws his hand from her grasp. “There’s too many things that could go wrong.” 

“Since when have we let that stop us?” Rey asks, an absurd smile tugging at her lips. “Since when have we ever stuck to a plan? We go in, we do what we have to do, and deal with the consequences later.” 

“Maybe it’s time that changed,” Finn says, with a drawn-out sigh, but the ghost of a smile on his lips betrays him.“Maybe it’s time we stop scraping by on sheer luck and dumbassery.” He laughs. “Maybe it’s time we stop trying to solve everything by jumping in a cockpit and blowing something up.” 

Rey clasps his hand, a mischievous glint in her eye. 

“It’s worked before, hasn’t it?” 

* * *

Rey stands on the boarding ramp, gripping the edge of the hatch as Finn angles the Falcon so it’s hovering above the train. Sheets of ice fall in torrents, and the wind shrieks in her ears. She bends her knees, poised to jump, as the _Falcon_ veers in range of the transport. She raises her comm to her lips, shouting over the wind’s roar. 

“On my count," she tells him. 

“Be careful,” Finn warns. 

Rey takes a deep breath. _One._ She fumbles at her belt, double checking her weapons are secure. _Two._ She rolls on the balls of her feet, every muscle bunched and quivering.

"Three."

Praying to every deity that may be listening, she leaps from the ramp. Using the Force for leverage, she lands on two feet. Hard. 

She pitches forward, carried by the momentum of her jump and the moving train, and splays on her hands and knees, grunting as the not yet healed wound in her leg twinges painfully. Flat on her belly, she holds on for dear life as the train clatters along the railway, the cars creaking and groaning as the wind batters against them. She watches the _Falcon_ rise in the air and peel off, gaining altitude as Finn covers her from the air. 

Rey grits her teeth, scooting along the metal roof of the train car as it speeds along, feeling for an entrance. It’s slow-going. The transport sways sickeningly and Rey fights to keep her lunch down. 

Her comm fizzes. 

“We’ve got company,” Finn says, and Rey watches as a sleek, black starfighter drops out of the clouds. A fraction of a second later, a missile sails through the air, missing the Falcon by inches. It strikes the mountainside, raining a maelstrom of debris down on Rey. 

“Finn!” Rey screams, flattening herself to the train car. A chunk of rock strikes her shoulder. She grunts, fighting to regain a tight hold on the tiny grooves in the metal. Her organs sink to her feet. She watches the Falcon pull into a nosedive to avoid the fighter’s gunfire. Two more assailants descend on him, opening fire. She’s helpless to do anything but watch as he peels away, leading the fighters away from the transport. Rey, tears stinging her eyes, watches Finn pull out a corkscrew spin, attempting to dodge the hail of fire. 

The transport rounds the mountainside, shuttling Rey away from the firefight. She’s alone with the wind, snow, and the sound of clattering metal as suddenly as the fighter had descended on them. 

The _Falcon_ is fast enough to outrun them. She hopes.

It's all she can cling to. 

Rey swallows her fear, an incredible feat of mental clarity despite her whirlwind thoughts, the numbness of her fingers and the shriek of the wind in her ears. She can only hope Finn manages to escape unscathed, but she’s no help to him wallowing in despair. No, she has to do what she came here to do. She has to stop this. It's bigger than her now. 

Kill the Empress. 

_Cut_ _off the head, the body dies._

This will be over, and she can go home. Perhaps she’d feel better if she knew where _home_ was. 

Crawling on her hands and knees, she locates an emergency exit hatch. She slips her fingertips under the groove. Rey yanks on it, resorts to hitting it with her fist, but it won’t budge. Rey places her palm against the frigid, metal surface. Drawing on the Force, she shears off the ice sealed to the latch and cracks it open. 

She slides feet-first into the car, below, and lands on her ass. Bracing herself against the wall, she manages to keep her balance as the transport rounds another bend. Her eyes sweep the car. There’s a camera in the upper corner. Rey withdraws her blaster and empties a round into the camera’s black eye. 

She’s alone, _thank Force_ , but she cannot afford to let her guard drop. She can't imagine the transports aren't manned with some kind of personnel to oversee the shipments. Regardless, there's still the welcome committee waiting at the docking station she's gotta worry about, and she's willing to bet an arm and both kidneys they'll be armed to the teeth, and shooting to kill. 

Rey stands on tip-toes and closes the hatch. She drops to her knees behind a stack of crates. The transport is stocked with dozens of the big, steel containers. She drags a hand over the hard, smooth surface of the nearest one and pops the latch. 

They contain everything from medical supplies to food to weaponry, she soon finds as she sifts through the contents. The transport’s carrying a massive stock of dehydrated rations, enough to keep a legion of stormtroopers fed for a month. Rey plucks a packet of salted nuts out of the array and pops a few in her mouth, though she is aggressively un-hungry at the moment, she can't remember the last time she ate something. 

She makes her way to the door. It slides open, and she steps through the connecting tube into the next car. She takes out the camera with routine efficiency. This one, too, is empty. Rey flattens herself against the wall as the train groans and sways, pitching to and fro and blowing in the raging blizzard like the last of autumn’s leaves clinging to skeleton bare branches. 

Her shoulder twinges painfully, and Rey sits on her heels, unzipping her jacket and peeling away the fabric underneath to reveal a few scrapes and a muddle of yellow and purple bruising. Wincing, Rey probes the bruise. Her fingertips skim the scrapes, healing them quickly and efficiently, keeping a portion of her attention on the doors on either side, poised to defend the entrance should an armed guard burst in at any moment. 

When she's finished, she straightens. The cases stacked floor to ceiling contain odd, glowing vials cushioned in protective gear. 

"Coaxium," Rey whispers, eyes widening. Her fingers brush the casing. She mentally runs the numbers, but she cannot fathom how many credits the coaxium in this car alone must be worth. 

And there’s more of it, cases upon cases piled high in each car she makes her way down the line. 

_What are they doing?_

_What are they_ building? 

If they need this much fuel, their fleet must be massive. Unless they’re selling it, though Rey has a sinking feeling this coaxium has passed through many hands before ending up on this transport, headed for the very literal heart of darkness. It costs about as much in blood as it does in credits. 

She shivers at the mental image of a fleet of dreadnaughts lurking somewhere in deep space, the light of a distant star glinting off durasteel hulls.

Rey’s fingers brush over a crate of coaxium, and a jolt of electricity nips her fingers. To her left, the door slides open. A tall, hooded figure stands in the doorway. Female, enrobed in swaths of dark fabric that swallow everything, even her face. Her sleeves are long, brushing the floor as she walks. She moves like a ghost, like a shiver, and Rey is reminded, with a jolt, of the hooded specter of Palpatine, down in the depths of the temple on Exegol. 

Rey swallows, still and silent, watching as the Empress approaches. This is a vision, a flesh-memory, perhaps. There are other memories, too. The thunder of a guard's footsteps down the walkway, or the whir of the engine and the groan of the brakes, the comings and goings.

Their echoes die away as the Empress draws near. 

The Empress is not alone. Rey’s stomach tightens into knots when she catches sight of her companion. It’s the man from the mountain. The one who saved her life. He’s masked, hood drawn. He seems to cower in the Empress’ wake. 

Something about him is horribly familiar. She can’t put her finger on it. 

“We’re not alone,” he says. He tilts his head, voice drawn and grim. “Do you feel it?” 

The Empress turns, and the fabric of her hood shifts, revealing a sharp, young face and a pair of green eyes set in smooth, white skin. 

“No,” she admits. She touches her companion’s shoulder, fingers claw-like and curling into the blackness of his cloak. “You are gifted beyond my abilities.” She smiles, but there’s an edge to it, a darkness. “That is why I must keep you close, my young apprentice. You are a valuable asset.” 

The masked man shifts uneasily. His lands on Rey. He stiffens. His gaze, shrouded by the mask, rests on her a fraction of a second too long. 

Rey shakes her head, silently pleading with him. Something jumps out at her then, some swell of emotion from within him, so clear and strong she can begin to pick out all the longing and loss, all the turbulence in his heart. It hits her like a blow to the chest, and something within her reaches out, too. Some deeply buried part of her weeps for him.

"You look as if you've seen a ghost," the Empress remarks, loftily. She turns, tracing the path of his gaze. She looks straight at Rey, or rather, straight through her, corners of her mouth pulled downward. Her eyes are hard, burning embers. Rey's hand tightens around her saber's hilt. 

“It’s nothing,” he says, turning to the Empress. "Forgive me, Master. I am mistaken."

Her face cracks into a twisted sort of grimace that could almost be a smile. When she speaks, her voice is silky. Dangerous. 

"You're lying." 

She clicks her tongue. _Tut tut._

"You can't hide anything from me."

The Empress reaches over, lifting the mask. Rey watches the him shudder away from her touch. He’s so afraid, she can read it in his body, in the way his shoulders level with his ears, like he's trying to fold in on himself. 

The mask comes off, and Rey holds her breath. 

He’s young. Seventeen or eighteen, the boyishness just beginning to fade, replaced by sharp edges. A splash of freckles dot his nose, barely visible under the harsh, artificial light. His hair falls over his forehead in jet-black waves. His eyes are as dark and infinite Ben’s had been, and with the same shadows. 

It’s the eyes that give him away. It confirms everything she hadn’t let herself suspect since she caught sight of him on the mountainside. The resemblance is striking. It hits like a sucker-punch to the stomach, knocking the breath from her lungs. It’s all she can do to keep from collapsing in a heap. Her heart breaks into a thousand pieces. 

She wants nothing more than to go to him, to smooth his hair back from his forehead, to wrap her arms around him and never let go. 

He looks so much like his father. 

The Empress rests a hand on his cheek, and he raises his eyes to meet hers. The fingers of her other hand skim his brow. Every fiber of Rey’s being is screaming, baying for blood. She’s can't do anything but watch as the Empress sifts through his mind, taking what she wants, things she has no right to. 

“The Jedi has come to kill me,” she says, lightly, airily, as if she were commenting on the weather. She opens her eyes, finger trailing the length of his face. Rey notes the tremble in her son’s bottom lip he tries so desperately to conceal. “She will fail.”

Her hand falls to her side. 

“Come, young Solo,” she says, sweeping away. “There is work to be done.”


	31. The Mirror

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you're healthy and safe! Prepare for ALL THE FEELS!!!

The conveyex screeches to halt. The base, from what Rey can glean from the darkened windows and the ringing in her ears, is buried deep inside a mountain. She’d wandered the length of the train and found it empty. Now, she unfurls herself and emerges from behind a supply crate, where she’d spent the remainder of the journey trying to compose herself after she’d watched her son, her baby, shudder under the Empress’ touch. After he’d trailed after that evil woman like a kicked puppy after its master. She’d wanted to go to him, wanted to call his name. She didn’t realize until the moment her lips parted that she hadn’t given him one. 

Rey straightens. She mops her face, though it’s useless. She can’t stop the tears. They flow thick and fast as she stands, shriveled and small, clutching her belly. She weeps for her son, for the version of the future she’d seen. 

Was this some kind of premonition? A prophecy? 

She thinks of the place she’d visited in visions, that in-between world, with doorways opening backwards and forwards in time. Had she unknowingly stepped through a portal? Had she broken a link in the chain, disrupted some essential course of events? 

He was on that mountain; he’d killed one of the scouts. If he was a product of some twisted, premonitory Force-vision, how had he affected her reality? Had he stepped through a door? Had she entered into a different plane of existence? Or had it been something else entirely?

The Dyad she shared with Ben Solo connected them across space. Did it reach across time, as well? And the son, the product of the Dyad, could he manipulate space and time too?

Her mind reels as she searches for beginnings of answers to the multitudes of questions pummeling her skull, but it all pales in comparison to her son’s face. The image is seared into the backs of her eyelids. He looks like Ben. Nearly a carbon copy, with his jet-black locks and ancient, dark eyes and sharp features. But she saw something of herself in him, too, something in his nose or mouth, perhaps, or in the light dusting of freckles on his nose. He was as tall as Ben, too. Tall and gangling, but growing into himself. 

He took after his father in more ways that stature and appearance, Rey thinks, with a bit of unease. The black shroud, the mask, the glittering red blade. But when she’d peeked at his presence in the Force, she’d seen a perfectly balanced blend of light and darkness inside him. He didn’t fear the dark like she did. He didn’t refuse the light his father had tried so hard to snuff out. It made him strong. 

Rey clamps a hand over her mouth, muffling her sobs. 

He’d recognized her, killed for her, defied his master to protect her. This, at least, gives her hope, but there had been so much pain in him. She'd felt it when their eyes met. The mere sight of her seemed to frighten him. As if . . .

_As if he'd seen a ghost._

What had she done to elicit such feelings in her son? Where was she, in that version of the future? Had she driven him away? Had she left him? Was she doomed to live out her days as Leia’s successor, heading a resistance against her own son, leading him to believe he couldn’t come home? Had she met an early demise? Had she left him on his own? Had she abandoned him? 

No. 

She still has time. She has time to change things, time to re-trace her steps, time to make things right. 

Rey clings to that as everything else begins to fall apart, and when the train stops she forces herself to stand, to finish this. 

She must. 

For her son. 

She straightens, bracing as the brakes squeal and the train shudders to a standstill. She withdraws her lightstaff. The doors open with a hiss, and two guards step onto the transport.

They’re expecting her, but they are not as quick or as practiced as she, and she has them on the ground in an instant. The first takes a blaster shot to the head. The second, a blade to the chest. 

She steps onto the platform, blaster raised, firing blindly. There’s more men on the docking bay. She doesn’t wait. She kills coldly, ruthlessly, without blinking, and they drop like flies. A stray bolt strikes the control panel built into the wall of the narrow docking bay, 

In a sick way, she’s glad. At least she’s no longer running in circles, chasing false leads and trying to make something out of nothing or wasting away on a jungle moon. At least this makes _sense_. She understands intimately the economy of death, the dance between saber, flesh and beating heart. Death is no stranger. Even when she was a child on Jakku she’d seen it up close, in the sun-scorched, twisted bodies of those who succumbed to dehydration out in the desert and in the squabbles that broke out at the dingy cantina squandered in the darkest corner of outpost on the blackest of nights. Some trigger-happy idiot with a blaster after he’d knocked back one too many drinks. She’d seen men killed, seen their bodies dragged out and buried in the sand without ceremony. Not deep enough, though. Never deep enough to keep the scavenging animals at bay.

In time, she killed too. She killed to survive. And later, she fought in the war. She’d killed then, this time not merely to survive, but because she believed in the Resistance, in everything it stood for. She believed in hope. She fought and she killed because she believed there was still good in the galaxy, though she’d seen so little of it in her twenty years of life. 

She believed in the Resistance, but the blood on her hands left a stain she couldn’t scrub off, and all the while a voice in her head, _his_ voice, called her to the dark. Called her to him. It left treacherous, parasitic inklings of doubt deep in the corners of her mind. They ate at her, nurtured by his silver tongue, purring from the shadows. He’d read the geography of her heart, and he knew how to use it against her. He held it in his hands, twisted it, played with it like a cat playing with some dead thing it had caught and killed.

She belonged in the dark, he’d told her. They both did. 

_It’s in our nature._

He was right. 

Rey tugs her saber out of a soldier’s chest, watches the blood sizzle and evaporate on the plasma blade. She isn’t doubting anymore. Every movement is sure, every stroke, every shot is aimed to kill. She kills, now, not out of malice, not for Resistance or even herself, but the dark-eyed boy she knew like a wild animal knows the scent of its offspring. The son she’d never get to meet if she slipped up, if one damned bullet sailed astray. 

This is what she knows, and she’s sure that every choice she’s ever made, every whisper in the dark, every path for her led straight here. Whatever happens here, now, is supposed to happen. So she squeezes the trigger and watches the bodies fall, one by one, playing henchman to that shadowy specter she knows so intimately. She takes comfort in the absence of her ghosts, of wormholes and time loops and a black realm with a million different doorways, things she doesn’t understand, even though she tries. Instead, she welcomes the things she does understand. The pounding of blood in her ears and the drone of the lightsaber cutting through air and the scent of burning flesh. 

She’s no Jedi. She’d known for a while now. 

She’s no Jedi. She’s just a killer. 

The satisfaction that rises hot and sticky in her throat after each strike of the saber across flesh and each shot as it makes its mark only confirms what Elijah had told her, so many eternities ago. The truth of it had lurked in Ben’s shadowed eyes when he extended his hand to her and asked her to join him, among the detritus of their destruction. Standing in the ashes, she almost took it. She wanted to. 

When he came for her on Exegol, she finally did. 

In their darkness, there was destruction. In their light, there was life. The proof was nestled in her womb. To protect that life, she must destroy. She must take. She must burn cities to the ground if she must. She's no Jedi. She knows passion and lust. She knows what it is to love and be loved in return. She has attachments, a family. And she’ll protect that family until death makes her cold and rigid. 

Rey’s head whips from side to side, looking for an exit, a route leading deep into the base. A guard seizes the distraction, lunging from behind the control panel. She raises her blaster. A bolt strikes his knee, and he crumples, grunting in pain. She silences him with another shot. 

She raises her saber to deflect another attack, but none awaits her. She’d expected a firing squad, but there's only a skeleton crew on the platform. 

Rey doesn’t wait for the parade. She ducks into a tunnel opening at the right of the platform. It’s crude, carved into the mountain and supported by rusted, steel beams. It’s dimly lit by oil lanterns. Rey sprints through the tunnel, splashing through the shallow puddles left by water leaking through cracks in the ceiling.The air is dank and cold, smelling faintly stale and musty, like something rotting. Like something that’s been dead for a long time. 

She keeps throwing glances over her shoulder, making sure there’s no one tailing her. It’s only a matter of time before the Empress sends her dogs after her, and she’s not about to take a blaster shot to the back of the head. 

The path forks, and Rey takes the narrower of the two, which appears to split off from the main travel route. It’s a split-second decision, one that could be costly, but she trusts the Force, trusts where it’s taking her.

The farther she goes, the narrower the tunnel becomes. The lamps give way to darkness. Rey withdraws her saber and ignites it, and soft, yellow light illuminates the tunnel. She squints, eyes adjusting to the semi-darkness. A large, furry creature half her size drops from the ceiling and opens a pair of large, leathery wings. Rey leaps back in surprise, catching sight of a large, fleshy snout and three pairs of blank, white eyes. It flies in the direction she came, and the frantic beating of its wings stirs the hair framing her face. Rey takes a breath, quieting her heart, and goes on. 

The tunnel grows rapidly narrower, until she’s sandwiched between shale walls, inching forward. The walls are closing in and her breaths come in short, panicked gasps. She’s accustomed to small spaces out of necessity of fitting into them to reach the components that would fetch their weight in rations, but the thought of the tons and tons of rock over her head is enough to choke the air from her lungs. 

She’s beginning to consider turning back, the tunnel far too narrow for her to fit comfortably, before she catches sight of a sliver of dim, blue light ahead. Sure enough, the tunnel opens to a wide cavern. Rey draws a shuddering breath of relief, glancing around the cavern. She doesn’t need the lightsaber to light her path anymore. The cavern, she realizes, is teeming with bio-luminescent plant life. The dim, bluish light seems to emanate from the walls, themselves. She steps forward, reaching out to stroke the petals of a huge, red flower. It’s petals expand to a circumference larger than her head. Moss blankets the cavern’s floor, muffling her footsteps, and plants with large, rubbery leaves burst from every crack and crevice. The running stream winds through the cavern, flanked by towers of stalagmite. There are insects buzzing softly as they light from flower to flower. A butterfly with striking, cobalt wings flutters around her head, wings brushing her cheeks with a touch as light as a whisper, before departing. 

Rey picks her way through the cavern, gaze turning upward. Its rocky ceiling, carved and worn away by eons of cyclical snow-melts, soar high above her head.The ceiling, too, is covered in fungi, growing in a spectrum of colors that emanate a soft, biochemical light. Several of those winged creatures cling to small purchases on the shale overhead. They peer at her through several pairs of white, sightless eyes, chittering softly. Though their blank stares unsettle her, they show no sign of aggression toward her, just vague curiosity. 

Rey watches them with mutual interest. One of the creatures flutters down from the ceiling and lights on one of the gargantuan, red flowers. It buries its snout in the center of the flower, lapping up the nectar welling in its depths. As she drinks, Rey catches sight of three tiny bodies clinging to the creature’s chest. The mother fixes her unseeing gaze on Rey, snout twitching as she samples the air, tongue darting out to lap at the drops of glowing, viscous nectar clinging to her whiskers. She sings a low, mournful cry and launches into the air, returning to her nest. Rey watches her go, a strong and inexplicable feeling of loss curling in her gut. She gives her head a shake, reminding herself of the task at hand, and goes on, following the stream. She’s hyper-aware of chattering water, the drip drip drip of mineral deposits from the stalagmite formations, the buzzing of insects and the flutter of wings from the canopy above. 

There’s a small opening in the wall of the cavern. It’s a tight fit. Rey kneels, peering into the darkness. The Force is a living thing; it moves around her, through her, heightening her senses. If she listens closely, she can hear it sing. It pulls her into its depths just as the mirror on Ahch-To had called to her. It beckons and taunts, and its voice is not one but many. The Jedi passed, perhaps, or something much older. Something ancient, preceding the stars. Something like life, itself. 

She doesn’t understand the language, but she knows what it’s trying to tell her. Somehow. 

She knows what she must do. 

She crouches on hands and knees and squeezes through the crack in the cavern wall. It opens to another, shorter tunnel. She stands, but she still has to stoop to avoid banging her head. In a matter of minutes, the tunnel’s mouth opens to another cavern, smaller than the first. No bio-luminescent moss grows here. No winged creatures nest on the rocky shelves above. She steps inside, lightstaff raised, expecting to find the Empress waiting for her. Instead, she finds a mirror identical to the one beneath Ahch-To.

The hand holding the staff drops to her side. She approaches the mirror, gut tightening as she remembers the overwhelming feeling of loneliness as she stood before that mirror, expecting answers and finding only her own reflection staring back at her. But there had been visions, too, and dreams. She’d seen the mirror before and she’d seen it after, in the wake of the battle on Crait. In dreams, she’d return to the mirror. Each time, she asked a question, and each time it was the same. 

_“Where are you?”_

She spread her fingers over the cool surface of the mirror and waited, and each time a shadowy figure appeared in the mirror, growing larger as it approached her. Each time, she’d hold her breath and wait until it put it hand up to hers, and each time the glass shattered before she could see who it was waiting for her on the other side of that mirror. She’d wake with tears staining her cheeks, overcome with that same feeling of intense loneliness, so cold it made her shiver. The more she dreamt of the mirror, the more frustrated she became that she never lingered long enough to see who awaited her, and the more she suspected, with increasing certainty, that it was Ben Solo who called to her from behind the glass. 

Kylo had pined for her, then, and she’d longed for him though she didn’t dare admit it, even to herself. Snoke had been lying. That much was clear after the bond had persisted after his death. It kept connecting them, across millions of parsecs. There had been instances, always brief and always leaving a lingering feeling that was as hard to identify as it was to swallow. A strange, mutual understanding, misplaced hatred, and something she could only describe as hunger. It hollowed her out and left her aching. Sometimes Rey refused to speak to him, sometimes they hurled insults at each other, and sometimes she woke up with him in her bed. She'd turn on her side with her back to him and try to go back to sleep, knowing he’d been gone in the morning, but it was a nearly impossible feat when every nerve was hyper-aware of his burly frame lying parallel to her, when every breath stirred the baby hairs on the back of her neck, when wild images raced through her mind even as she tried desperately to banish them. The kind that made her cheeks pink and her belly stir with want. 

She never had any nightmares when he shared her bed. She couldn’t afford to dwell on the implications of that. 

Once, she’d woken up to gray light filtering through her windows and a pair of sturdy arms wrapped her around her, holding her to his chest. It was the first time he wasn't gone when she woke. Against all better judgement, she let herself stay there, studying him in ways she couldn’t when he was awake. It was a quiet moment, a peaceful moment—an oddly pleasant memory amidst all the turmoil. She let herself return to that moment, sometimes. She withdrew it from all the things she’d stashed away and kept under lock and key. She returned to it, time and time again, feeling dirty, like she was a traitor, somehow. Like she was breaking some sort of rule, letting herself recall a memory of him with fondness instead of malice. She’d studied him, mapped the odd freckle or two on his face, drawn invisible lines across the sharp angles of his cheeks, his jaw, his nose and brow. She moved her hand to the place where his heart beat steadily beneath his bare chest and kept time with it. He’d begun to stir, and Rey watched his brow furrow, watched a muscle working his jaw as he uttered one word, too soft, almost indistinguishable. But she had heard it, and she couldn’t unhear it, though she wished to. 

One word. Her name

_“Rey.”_

She held her breath. He woke, then, dark eyes sliding lazily around the room before resting on her face. His face, as open and relaxed as she’d ever seen it before, closed immediately, pulled tight at the edges, though his eyes betrayed him. She scrambled away, as horrified to find herself enjoying his touch, his scent, his warmth as she was to regret the absence of it, and before either of them could say anything on the matter, the connection broke, leaving her alone in her quarters, shivering despite Ajan Kloss’s heat. 

After that, their connections came more often, lasted longer. He battered at the walls around her mind, he whispered in her ear, and his colors bled into her despite every attempt to shut herself off from him. She couldn’t help what she felt, couldn’t help that they were inextricably linked, and that link was manifesting in her dreams. In the mirror, in the hand reaching for her on the other side of the glass. 

Now, as Rey stands before the mirror in that cave, she knows. It was him. It's always been him. She’s certain he’s waiting for her on the other side. She approaches the glass, extending a hand. 

The words fall from her lips before really registers them.

“Where are you?” 

The shadowed figure appears. It approaches, and Rey’s holds her breath, tries to quiet her pounding heart. The figure pauses, puts his hands up to the glass. The shadow’s features grow clearer, until Rey can see the flecks of light in the pair of eyes staring back at her. Eyes so dark they’re almost black. 

“Ben?” 

But it’s not Ben. 

The glass shatters, and Rey screams, springing back and raising her arms to shield her face from the hail of glass. 

He towers over her, at least a head taller. He’s slimmer than his father, in his youth, but no less intimidating. He’s shrouded in black, and the eyes peering at her through the glass are concealed by the mask he wears. The hiss of lightsaber igniting assails her ears, and twin blades spring to life. One side of the staff bleeds crimson, and the other is pale blue. It’s like no weapon she’s ever seen, and then he's lunging toward her, and she barely has time to ignite her yellow blades before it’s inches from her face. The red and yellow blades erupt in a shower of sparks as they collide. He advances on her, forcing her against the wall. Rey grunts under the strain. She kicks off the wall and leaps over him. She lands harder than she intended and the impact sends shockwaves through her kneecaps. She grits her teeth, falling into defense, holding her blade parallel to the ground. 

He watches, calculating, pacing a yard’s length along the opposite wall, looking for openings in her defense like a predator closing in on wounded prey which may kick and bite in its panic. He’s breathing heavily, and the frenzied emotions rolling off him in waves are too muddled to decipher. The only thing she can pick out, among a million other conflicting sensations, is fear. 

She won’t hurt him. They both know it. She won’t lay a finger on him, not even to protect her own life. He could cut her down here and now and she wouldn’t stop him.

Why is he so afraid? 

She wonders if he’s going to hurt her, if the universe is cruel enough to let her die at the hands of her own child. It’s a vague, passing thought. She feels like this is happening to someone else, like she’s just watching it all play out. She barely feels the weapon in her hands, barely feels anything at all. She isn’t afraid. She isn’t even angry. No, the only thing she feels is loss. Terrible loss. 

Who is this man, who is every bit her son and every bit a stranger? What could’ve gone so wrong to lead her to this? What had she done to mess up so badly? And gods, why, after everything she suffered and everything she fought for, every damned sacrifice, every death—why did it have to end like this?

Rey swallows hard, tears streaming down her cheeks. She deactivates her saber and drops it at her feet with a dull clunk. She straightens, facing her son. To her surprise, words come easy this time. 

“I’m sorry it has to end this way,” she tells him. “I wish I could’ve watched you grow up. I wish I could’ve watched take your first steps, watched you make your first mistakes. I wish I could’ve been there to catch you when you fell.” Her voice breaks. She looks at him, mopping her eyes. When, again, she speaks, her voice is barely more than a whisper. 

“I’m sorry.” 

With an air of finality, of defeat, he deactivates the staff's blue and red blades. 

Slowly, carefully, he reaches up and removes his helmet. It falls to the floor with loud thud. He looks at her, eyes glittering with tears, his face crinkling at the edges. 

“You were,” he says, and his voice breaks. Rey clamps her hand over her mouth, stifling a sob. “You were there for all of it,” he tells her. His gaze shifts to the empty space beside her, to something she can’t see. A ghost of a smile plays on his lips. His eyes shine. 

“Both of you.” 

And then his arms are around her, pulling her into a hug that squeezes all the air from her lungs, and she’s hugging him back, weeping into his shoulder. She fights for air, feeling his body shaking against her as he fights to control his sobs. 

“My baby, my boy,” she whispers, combing her fingers through his shock of black locks. “My sweet, sweet boy.” 

He withdraws, holding her shoulders. Rey caresses his cheek. 

His lip trembles. A tear rolls down his nose, and he wipes it away. For the first time, she notices the pendant he wears around his neck. Hanging from a piece of twine, two kyber crystals glitter. One is purple, one yellow. She reaches for them, stroking her thumb over the surface of the purple crystal. She raises her eyes to meet her son’s. 

She smiles, brushing a wave of black hair out of his eyes. 

“You look so much like your father.” 

His lip trembles. He wraps her in another embrace, and she clings to him, and amidst the tears she hears him utter something that threatens to break her into a million pieces. He buries his face in her shoulder and there it is, one word, muffled by Rey’s jacket and the tears and the time and space between them. 

_“Mom.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 3 NOTES:  
> 1) The bio-luminescent cave was inspired by the forests of Pandora in James Cameron's Avatar, which I re-watched over the weekend. Naturally, I listened to the soundtrack on repeat and it contributed a lot of the creative juices I needed to write this chapter.  
> 3) Reylo babey's blue and red lightstaff was inspired by some early concept art for Kylo Ren.  
> 2) we've officially reached the beginning of the end!! I'm estimating 5-7 more chapters before the story is complete. THANK YOU! to those of you who have stuck with me through this.  
> As always, drop a review and say hi!


	32. The Warning

Rey holds him tightly, wishing she didn’t have to let him go, and all too soon it’s over, and he breaks the embrace. He grips her arm, and there’s a wildness in his eyes that scares her. 

“Listen to me,” he says, urgently. His fingers dig into her skin hard enough to hurt. “I came to warn you. You have to go. In a few minutes, she’s gonna blow this place sky-high,” he says. Rey goes cold. 

"What?"

“She’s got bombs rigged in every crack and crevice of this place. You’ll be vaoprized if you don’t leave. Quickly.” 

He grabs her hand, tugging her toward the tunnel. She follows, breath sticky in her throat, hand sweaty in his grip. She jogs after him, panting, one hand clutching the saber close to her chest, the other clutching her belly. 

“Come on, hurry!” 

They run, and for a while it’s just the sound of their stuttering breaths and their boots hitting the stone floor. Rey tries to re-trace her steps, but he catches her arm. 

“Not that way. She’s got combat droids stationed at every known exit in this place. They’re trying to barricade you in. We have to go this way. It’s the only exit they haven’t bothered to block.” 

He tugs her down a different pathway, through a series of tunnels, and into a separate cavern. He drags her to the far wall, where a steep incline of stone blocks their path. 

“Climb!” he instructs

 _“What?!”_ Rey yelps. 

“Just do it!” he hisses. Rey finds purchase on the wall and hikes herself up. Little by little, she scales the steep wall, hands and knees banging against the jagged. She grunts in pain when her hand slips, cutting a four-inch, jagged gash across her palm. 

“Keep going!” he urges. She does, flat against the rock, looking for footholds, little grooves in the rock that mean the difference between life and death. She doesn’t look down, doesn’t look back. The sound of her son's ragged breaths aren't far behind. Eventually, she reaches the top, pulling herself up on the shelf of rock close to the ceiling of the cavern. She collapses, fighting to catch her breath. 

“Are. You. Crazy?” she pants.

He grins. 

“Not crazier than you. This is our way out, c’mon.” He offers a hand, helping her to her feet. She brushes the dust from the seat of her pants. 

“This’ll take us to the underground spring. From there, we’ll follow the stream. It empties at the base of the mountain. But we have to hurry. This whole base’ll be dust and we will be too if we don’t make it out.” 

“Why—”

“It’s a trap. She hasn't frequented this base in years. It’s mostly just a stop in her supply trail, now. And even that’s been shut down for months. She kept a skeleton crew here in case you decided to show up. And you did. Stupidly.” He gives her a hard look, but the corners of his mouth twitch into something resembling a smile. 

“She knows you’re here. She doesn’t just want to kill you, she wants to obliterate everything you are. Everything you stand for. She wants to send a message. 

He presses his lips into a thin line.

“Thing is, she doesn’t like getting her hands dirty, and, well,” he rubs his neck, a dark look about him. “With thirty tons of explosives at her disposal, this seems like a logical solution.” 

Rey shivers. 

“How much time do we have?” 

“Not much. Come on.” 

He leads her through a tunnel big enough, thankfully, to stand up straight. It’s dark. So dark she cannot see her hand if she holds it inches from her nose. At first, she jogs with her saber held aloft, trying to illuminate their path, but it slows her down, so she opts to run in the dark. 

“Here,” he says. He cracks a glow-rod, and the pale light is sufficient enough that Rey runs without fear of running straight into a stone wall. She pants, struggling to keep up with his long-legged gait. 

The air stinks something awful. Rey makes a face, catching his eye. 

“Ugh,” he remarks, scrunching his nose in distaste. “Sulfur.” 

“The springs aren’t far ahead.” 

Sure enough, Rey hears the whisper of running water. The whisper grows to a steady chatter, and Rey notices, for the first time, a thin stream cutting through the tunnel. Wisps of steam rise from the surface of the water. It’s unbearably hot and humid in the tunnel. Sweat drops down Rey’s brow and sticks to her back, gluing her clothes to her skin. Her muscles ache, and her tongue is sandpaper in her mouth, but she pushes on, jogging a few steps behind her son. 

Eventually, Rey glimpses the light at the end of the tunnel. Literally. Relief washes over her. 

“We’re almost there,” she gasps. He stops, hands on his knees, blowing out a long breath. Rey squints at him. 

“I don’t know your name,” she says, quite suddenly. 

He gives her a strange look, face pinched with something she can’t quite name.

“Kiran,” he says quietly. He smiles. “Kiran Solo.” 

“Kiran,” Rey says, softly, testing it out. Liking the way it feels.

“Kiran, I—”

_“—isn’t this a happy little picture?”_

Rey’s hand jumps to her weapon. She turns on her heel toward the voice, honeyed and chillingly familiar. She ignites her saber. There, in the mouth of the tunnel, stands the Empress. A woman in black, lips bowed in a sharp-edged smile. 

Rey moves to shield Kiran with her body, but he’s gone. Vanished, without a trace. Rey faces the woman, rotating her blades warningly, lips pulled back in a snarl. 

“I’ve waited a long time for this,” Rey growls. The Empress smiles sweetly. 

“So have I.” She pulls back her hood, and dim light illuminates draws sharp shadows over the valleys and hills of her face. Rey squints at her. Somehow, she’d missed the resemblance. Like an old holograph of a relative which bears striking resemblance despite a generational gap, before time wears away the likeness. Something in the jaw, or the nose, or possibly the eyes, though hers are green instead of Rey’s muddled hazel. They look alike. Too alike. 

Rey recalls the woman she’d seen in the throne room on the Death Star. The woman on the dark throne, with twin blades of scarlet and teeth filed into points. Palpatine’s puppet. A monster. 

Rey studies the Empress, teeth bared and shoulders set, turning her staff over in her hands. Spitting a war cry, she lunges. Rey buries her blade in the woman’s chest. Where the plasma edge should’ve met resistance, blood and bone and tissue, it slides through air. The Empress’s chin drops, peering at the blade. She raises her eyes to meet Rey’s gaze, clenching her fist. Rey feels as if a giant’s invisible hand wraps around her midriff, flinging her backwards. She sails through the air and slams into the wall. The impact knocks the breath from her lungs. Her blade spins out of her grip and clatters to the ground. The Empress stalks toward her. Rey fumbles at her belt. She wrenches her blaster from its holster, she fires three shots into the Empress’ skull. They pass through her and ricochet off the opposite wall. 

“Kriff,” Rey gasps. She thinks of the semi-corporeal shadow that attacked her in Hanna City. She thinks of the stunt Luke pulled before he died. The projection had looked so real, real enough to fool Kylo himself, in the darkest hour. 

“Coward . . .” Rey coughs, blinking the bright spots from her field of vision. 

She approaches Rey. She kneels, bringing herself eye-level to Rey as she struggles for breath, for a foothold. Rey spits in her face. The Empress just smiles. 

“I didn’t think you’d be stupid enough to come here.” 

“You’re a coward!” Rey cries. She struggles to her feet. Her saber sails through the air and into her outstretched hand. 

She wants to kill. 

She feels like she did when she circled Kylo as he lay bleeding in the snow with his face split in half. She is something feral. She is something beastly, something to be feared. In this moment, she is not Rey. She is a monster. She knows nothing but hunger and pain. She knows nothing but the losses she has suffered and the one that must pay for those losses. 

She’ll pay. In blood. 

“You’d kill an infant to save your own skin.” 

Tottering and off-balance, Rey gives her head a shake, seeing double. Her fingers flex on the hilt of her weapon. 

“To save the galaxy from obliteration, yes. He will bring death to everyone and everything you love. Trust me, Rey. I’ve seen it.” 

“I’ve seen something, too,” Rey says. “What you fear . . . It can be prevented, prevented in ways that don’t involve the murder of a child!” 

The Empress’ eyes blaze like hunks of jade reflecting flame. 

“It cannot happen any other way.” 

“I can’t accept that.” 

“Then you must die.” 

Rey nods. 

“Kill me, then. That’s what you want, isn’t it? Finish it.”

The Empress smiles. 

“I already have.” 

And then the world implodes, and everything burns. 

* * *

She falls for a long time. When, finally, she hits the ground, it takes her a long while to discern where she is. It’s black. So black it swallows everything. At first, she maybe she’s dead, and if not dead, then certainly she’s gone blind. She waits, trembling and afraid, fingers tracing the surface biting at her back, her hip, her calves and elbows. Stone, maybe. Wet stone, and something slippery. Algae? 

She sits up, straining her eyes sightlessly against the darkness. Water, waves perhaps, slap gently against rock. The scent of salt and sea and dead things fills her nostrils. 

Definitely algae. 

Something glitters to her left, and she turns to squint at it. 

It's then she realizes she can see. 

It’s night on the island. There’s no moon to light the night sky, but Rey catches a glimpse of the stars through the hollows in the cave’s ceiling. She blinks, letting her eyes adjust to the dark. 

She struggles to her feet.

The Force moves strangely here. She felt it the first time she'd fallen into this darkness. It's much too dark. But it isn't a sickly darkness, nor a malicious one. It is like black marble. Reverent and stoic. It keeps secrets. It's been here long before her and it will be here long after, and something in her, perhaps the part that is Ben or the part that is Palpatine or maybe the part that's just Rey, recognizes this place. From another lifetime, perhaps. 

And it opens its arms to her. 

The mirror looks exactly as it did, so long ago. Another lifetime ago. Rey approaches it, slowly picking her way over the slick rock. The sound of waves lapping against the rocks is the only interruption in an otherwise heavy, suffocating sort of silence. 

Inches away from the surface, she raises he hand. Her fingers hover above the glass. She counts the seconds, counts the beats of her heart. 

_Show me._

The glass is cool to the touch. She presses her palm flat against its surface. 

It begins to swirl, moving pensively, like quicksilver, like the surface of deep, clear water.

 _“Show me,”_ she repeats. Aloud, this time. “Tell me what to do.” 

As always, a blurred shadow appears in the mirror. It approaches her, and Rey holds her breath. A hand meets the glass, pressed up to hers. The mirror’s surface clears, and Rey pulls in a jagged, shuddering breath. 

“Ben.” 

He smiles, nothing but warmth in his eyes. She looks at their hands. If it wasn’t for the glass, they’d be touching. She wishes he wasn’t so far out of reach. She wants nothing more than to feel his skin on her skin. The mirror, as if it had heard her silent plea, dissolves. It melts away, and then Ben is pulling her against his chest. He catches her face in his hands and kisses her, and she kisses him back, slowly, sweetly. He breaks the kiss, thumbing her cheek. Rey lets out a sob, burying her face in his chest. He combs his fingers through her locks, his other hand resting over the place where their baby grows. 

“It’s almost over,” he tells her, lips moving against her crown. Rey pulls away, mopping her eyes. 

“You must face her. She won’t stop until one of you is dead.” 

She nods. 

“I can do it.” 

Ben nods, adoration bleeding into his features. He couldn’t hide it if he tried, and the look in his eyes fills her with a fuzzy feeling she isn’t accustomed to. 

“I know,” he says, nudging her forehead with his own. 

“ _We_ can do it. Together. We’re better as a team, remember?” Rey says, offering a watery smile. 

She holds out her hand, palm up, in imitation of the familiar gesture. It would’ve been something of an inside joke between them, if they'd had more time. 

“Join me?” 

Ben smiles. 

“I’m with you,” he says, tucking a strand of hair behind her hair. “Until the end.” 

He takes her hand, and the moment their fingers interlock, her surroundings dissolve and she’s plunging into water. She feels herself dragged down, sinking. 

She’s been under too long. Every cell screams for air. She opens her mouth, trying to inhale, and earns a mouthful of water. She tries to scream, tries to kick, but something’s dragging her down. She’s so far down. The surface of the water is unreachable, now. So far away . . . 

Her vision dims. There’s pain in her lungs like she’s never felt, and her extremities are numb. The water’s so cold. She watches the last of the oxygen leave her lungs in little bubbles, vaguely aware that she’s dying. 

A voice erupts in her head, then. Rey claps her hand over her ears. Shockwaves of pain tremble through her skull as the Empress invades. She tries to resist the intrusion, but she’s not strong enough, barely clinging to consciousness. She is powerless as the Empress forces her way through her thin barriers. Rey cannot rid her mind of the image of some bird sinking its talons into her brain. If she had a scrap of air left she would’ve screamed, but there’s just silence and terrible weight, like a fat man is sitting on her chest. 

**_We’re not done yet,_ ** the Empress warns, and the voice is loud and everywhere all at once. **_I’ll kill you. I’ll kill the child. I’ll end your bloodline._ **So she isn’t dead. Miraculously. 

She almost wishes she was. 

Something tells her she won’t have to wait for long. 

Rey eases her eyelids closed. They’re heavy anyway, and she couldn’t keep them open if she tried.

**_We’ll meet again, Jedi._ **

The contempt in her words, the venom, is sharp enough to cut through bone. Rey feels each word like some long, sharp tool forced into the soft, fleshy folds of her brain. 

**Get. Out. Of. My. Head.**

Rey hurls each word like a blow aimed to kill. 

The presence recedes as suddenly as it had come, chased away. 

The pain in Rey’s lungs begins to fade. The world is aflame on the other side of her eyelids. 

_I must be dead._

Someone’s comm is ringing shrill. She wishes they’d turn it off. She can still feel something tugging at her foot, tugging her down, but she no longer feels the weight of the water. 

Something’s biting her arm. There’s pain everywhere, so much of it she can’t narrow it down to a single injury. She shrinks away from it, trying to burrow back into the darkness, wishing to return to that wonderful nothingness, to that half-a-second of deathly bliss before consciousness dragged her back to the surface again. 

She draws a staggering breath.

She can breathe. 

_She can breathe._

Rey’s eyes snap open. 

She’s lying flat on her back in the snow. And she’s being dragged.

At first, she thinks it’s Ben. She blinks, trying to force the double-image into something identifiable. The sun is stark and white against a sky so blue it makes her nauseous. It’s much too bright to make out the face of the man dragging her across the ice. 

The static isn’t from someone’s comm at all, but in her ears. Something’s wrong with her hearing. 

The acrid scent of smoke and singed flesh clogs her nostrils. She coughs, and pain sears her throat. Someone must’ve set fire to her insides, because that’s what it feels like. 

The pain rolls over her in waves, and she finds herself wishing for sleep, for unconsciousness, anything to take her away from this. 

“Stop!” she sobs, tears cutting tracks down the soot covering her face. “Stop!” 

Thankfully, he does. There’s a pause, and the crunch of snow under a pair of boots, and then the man is kneeling beside her, one hand at her cheek, the other clasping her hand. 

“Rey?” he asks, a little breathily, desperately. She realizes then, that her hearing is gone in one ear. The other one continues to ring shrilly. It makes it hard to pinpoint where the voice is coming from, but it doesn’t stop her from recognizing it immediately. 

“Finn,” she croaks, managing a smile. She lets her head fall back in the snow, and she almost forgets how much pain she’s in, she’s so relieved. She’s never been so happy to see him in her life. She squeezes his hand weakly. 

“What happened?” she asks, wincing. Talking hurts her throat. Hell, just _breathing_ hurts her throat. 

“Save your strength. We’re almost there,” he says, hurriedly.

“No,” Rey moans. She seizes a fistful of his jacket as he makes to stand. _“What happened?”_

“It just blew up, Rey.” 

Oh.

Rey squeezes her eyes shut, choking back a sob. The explosion. The blast, the ringing in her ears. That awful smell, like electrical fire. 

Like flesh. 

There’s something in his voice that frightens her. Something removed. Something empty. 

“The whole mountain. Boom. It’s just . . . _gone_.” 

“Kiran . . .” she moans, remembering her son. 

“He was still . . .” 

Finn shushes her gently. 

“Hang on, Rey,” he pleads. “The Falcon’s just up ahead—” 

“ _Kiran!_ ” she sobs, tears obscuring her vision. She glares at the sky, waves of pain and panic tossing her against sharp rocks. With nowhere to go, she lays there and festers in it, tears leaking from her eyes and dripping from her chin. Her teeth are chattering and she can’t make them stop. 

The blue sky is slowly darkening as black smoke billows into the air. The smell is awful. Like a fuel leak. Finn’s got his collar pulled up over his mouth and nose to keep out the smoke. Rey does the same, though it hurts to move her fingers. Thankfully, the melting slush had soaked through her shirt, and the dampness helps filter out more of the debris. Asphyxiation is _not_ the way she wants to go. 

Finn stops. He gathers her in his arms, grunting as he hoists her into the air and carries her the rest of the way. The crunch of snow under his feet gives way to a metal thud, and Rey realizes they’re boarding the Falcon. 

Her vision swims out of focus, and she’s seized with a violent swell of vertigo. It swoops low in her stomach, and before she can accurately aim, she vomits all over Finn’s shirt.

“Sorry,” she mutters, once she’d finished. She wipes her mouth on the back of her hand. 

“It’s okay,” he says, gently. _He must be very far away,_ Rey thinks, vaguely. Her vision dims, and she blacks out. 

* * *

When she wakes, not more than a minute has passed. She’s lying on her back across one of the bunks in the crew’s quarters. Finn’s still beside her. His fingers work at the zipper of her jacket. Or what’s left of it, anyway. Some of the fabric disintegrates between his fingers. It’s blackened, singed. Badly. She reaches up to help him, but he knocks her hand away. Eventually, he manages to wrest it away from her body. Her shirt follows, and then she’s lying there in her breast band, shivering despite the feverish heat of her skin. 

Finn gasps, but checks himself, clenching his jaw. His fingers probe where the pain is greatest, and white agony erupts where his fingers make contact. It’s all she can do to cling to consciousness, though she wishes she weren’t. She cries out, and her voice is ragged with the smoke inhalation. Rey squints up at him, trying to make his face swim back into focus. Anything to distract from the pain. She thinks he looks a little green. 

“What?” she asks. “What is it?” 

Slowly, she drops her gaze to her torso. It doesn’t really look like a torso, just a ragged patch of singed flesh. It spans her right side, creeping all the way from belly button to her collarbone. She grips his hand, numbed to silence. 

“You’re g-gonna be okay,” Finn stammers, face shiny with sweat or tears, she doesn’t know which. “I’m gonna get help. J-Just hang on. Hang on, Rey.” 

She doesn’t have much choice, though each breath comes out like a rattling wheeze and every up and down movement of her chest sends sharp pains throughout her body. Her vision falters, and she thinks she may be drifting away again, but the universe doesn’t show her such mercy. 

She watches Finn make his way to the cockpit and silently pleads with him to stay with her. In a moment, the _Falcon’s_ engine begins to whine. 

She thinks of Kiran. She can only hope he escaped the flames unscathed. Had he been there when the bombs detonated? She doesn’t know. The timeline is muddled in her head. She starts trying to put the puzzle together in her head—anything to distract from the pain—but it makes her skull ache, so she tries to stop thinking about it. Of course, trying not to think about it is, in a way, thinking about it, and all of sudden she can’t breathe for the pain, for the panic, for the loss of her son. They’d been separated. No, he’d left. Why? 

She squeezes her eyes shut, just wanting this to be over. 

_Slow breaths, Rey_ , a voice says softly, in her head. She thinks it sounds like Master Luke. 

Slow breaths. 

_In. One two. Out._

_In. One. Two._

_Out._

She can hear Finn muttering to himself. The thrusters roar to life, and g-forces seize the ship as it jumps to lightspeed, carrying her away from Vandor. She lies there, waiting for the pain to subside, but it doesn’t. 

_In. One two. Out._

_In. One. Two._

_Out. One. Two._

_In . . ._

She doesn’t have any sense of time. No chronology of events. She just lies there, and everything is happening all once and everything is happening over the course of several years, and all she knows is pain.

_In. One two. Out._

_In. One. Two._

Finn comes to check on her. She spreads a sort of salve over the worst of the burns that hurts before it brings relief, and Rey screams for pain of it. She is almost comatose, so removed from it all that she feels like she’s floating. Finn clasps her hand. He kisses her bruised knuckles and weeps. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m so, so sorry.” 

He weeps and it breaks her heart. His sobs are punctuated by empty words meant to soothe her. They don’t. 

_I’m sorry._ He says it over and over, until all meaning detaches from the words and hangs there, between them. 

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Rey.”

In the chasm. The chasm she’d opened up between them.

To protect him. No. To protect her. 

_I’m sorry, too,_ she wants to say. But she can’t speak. So she drowns. 

Eventually, the pain becomes too much. Maybe Finn senses it or maybe he just sees it in her eyes, because he slips two large pills and some water down her throat. 

“Rey, stay with me. We’re almost there.” 

He says something else, but she doesn’t quite catch it. 

_Sedative_ , she thinks, almost weeping with relief, as the pain ebbs to a dull roar and she sinks into lilac-colored mists. 


	33. The Island

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Trigger warning for graphic violence and loss of one or more appendages ;)

She’s floating. In water. No, in a tank. The liquid surrounding her is much too thick, much too viscous, to be water. _Bacta_. The word surfaces in her brain after a heavy pause.

She opens her eyes, jolting fully awake. Her breath bogs up in her throat as she comes to her senses enough to feel the sharp edges of panic like hooks in her skin. She can’t speak. She tries to lift her arms, but they’re too heavy, weighted down by the stuff. 

Someone’s voice comes to her, but it’s too muffled by the thick glass and the gel substance surrounding her to understand. Nevertheless, it’s enough to calm her. A little, at least. She struggles to keep her eyes open. 

There’s a heavy, awkward apparatus covering her mouth and nose. She watches little bubbles of air rise and float to the surface of the tank as she breathes. There’s no pain, anymore, just numbness and a faint, tickling sensation as her skin repairs itself, helped along by the substance she’s floating in. She cranes her neck, trying to catch a glimpse of the burns she’d sustained in the explosion, but she can’t see for the damned breathing machine on her face. 

She lifts a hand, pawing at the apparatus. 

_Don’t touch that!_ A voice snaps. It echoes, unspoken, in her mind. It sounds like Ben. 

Rey feels something cold enter her veins, and then her body goes slack. She feels impossibly heavy, and then she feels nothing at all. 

* * *

Rey weaves in and out of consciousness. She has visitors. A rotating cast—some faces she recognizes, some she doesn’t. They stand outside the glass, peering inward. She feels gawked at, like a strange tentacled animal in an aquarium. 

Sometimes they’re doctors in white uniforms clutching datapads or med droids adjusting the dials on the machinery by the tank, measuring her vitals and tracking her recovery. 

Sometimes it's a familiar face. Finn or Jannah or Rose. She gets better at distinguishing their voices outside the tank. Poe arrives. He fills her in as best he can. She learns they're on Vendaxa. Rey tries to remember what she knows of the planet. A small, lush planet in the Expansion Region occupied by Resistance affiliates alongside the native acklay. Finn rushed her there immediately after finding her half-buried and half-dead after the mountain exploded. 

She’d sustained second and third degree burns on the left side of her back, chest and torso, along with a fractured radius, sustained from the impact as she hit the ground after being flung into the air by the momentum of the explosion.

Rey locks eyes with Finn, pushing a question into his mind she hopes he’ll understand. 

_The baby?_

Finn nods. 

_He's okay._

She screws up her face against the tears and chokes on them, and it's hard to breath. They give her another drug. Something to take the edge off. Finn tells her everything’s going to be okay, and she wants to believe him. 

They let her sleep, after that. 

Once, she wakes to find Ben with his hand pressed to the glass. She reaches to lay her hand against his, lining up their fingertips. If she weren’t in a tank, if she didn’t have this damned thing on her face, she would’ve said his name. She would’ve spoken it aloud and made it real. 

_You okay?_ he asks, without speaking a word. Nevertheless, the words are in her mind, and she discerns them as clearly as if he'd whispered them in her ear. 

_I’ve been better._

_You’re stronger than you know._

_I need to be stronger, if I’m going to protect him._

_You don’t have to do everything on your own, you know._

_I have to do this alone. No one else is going to die for me._

A flicker of amusement rises in him. It’s hard to miss. 

_Is something funny?_

_You’re being noble._

_I’m trying to protect my family. That includes Finn. And Poe. And Rose, and everyone else. I can’t lose them like I lost you._

_You didn't lose me._

_I did. Once._

_You’ve forgotten the promise I made you._

Rey’s silent for a moment. She gazes into his eyes. There’s a sadness there. A sadness that manifests like a shadow. It haunts her. 

_I haven’t forgotten._

_I’ll be with you, whatever happens. You’re not alone._

_Neither are you._

And then he’s gone, and Rey lets herself drift off for no other reason than to escape the pain. It's not from the burns, from the piece he hacked off when he left her. 

* * *

Rey wakes with a cry and a violent shudder, her fingernails digging into the shabby blankets which serve as her only barrier against the damp draft leaking from the vent above her head. She’s in the med-bay on the Resistance base in the tropics of Vendaxa. Bed 307, at the end of the hall. She sits up, breathless with the sharp-edged realization that she isn’t alone. She’s accumulated her fair share of rude awakenings in her years but this one nearly takes the cake. Rey paws blindly for her saber, before everything comes back to her. 

Rey clamps her hand over her mouth, reliving the explosion. The flash of light, the pain in her lungs, the burns . . . 

She pushes all that away, straining her eyes against the darkness, still searching for her weapon. They must’ve taken it when they stripped her naked and threw her in a bacta tank. She makes to stand, struggling to balance on wobbly legs, clinging to the bed for support. 

“Who’s there?” she demands, to the dark. 

“It’s me.” 

He’s standing in the corner, eyes trained reproachfully on her. For a split second she repeats her earlier mistake. The name’s on her lips (Ben?) before she checks herself. It’s those damned, dark eyes. Like Ben’s, they are filled with a multitude of silent entreaties and a perpetual, bone-deep sadness, and something else too, some harried uneasiness, like he expects an attempt on his life around every corner. Like his father, he sleeps with his fists clenched.

Rey wonders if her eyes look like that. They must. 

She wishes she could ease that pain. She wishes she could will it away with all those empty promises she’d quit telling herself long ago—that everything would be alright.

It’s a lie. A beautiful one, too. She isn’t so naive to believe it, even though she wants to. 

“Kiran,” Rey breathes. She stands, still unsteady on her feet after her sojourn in bacta sludge (who knows how long she’d been stuck in that tank), and goes to him. She reaches for his hand and he takes it. 

“You’re alive.” 

“How’re you feeling?” he asks. 

“Fine,” she says. She looks down at her chest. The burns are gone, and only pink streaks of new skin remain. There won’t even be a scar. As for the break in her arm, well, it’s good as new. 

“They really did a number on me." 

She touches his shoulder, smile faltering. 

“Is this real? How . . . how is this possible?”

“Reality is subjective,” Kiran says, one corner of his mouth quirking into a half-smile. She’s seen the same expression in Ben, and in Han Solo. Her heart twinges painfully. 

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Rey mutters, sitting on the edge of the bed. Kiran settles himself beside her. “I don’t understand.”

She’s open to all the possibilities. Either she’s finally gone undoubtedly, irrevocably crazy, or he’s a vision, a flesh-memory like the one she’d seen when she’d first laid hands on the legacy saber. That had taken her backward and forward in time, right? _Right?_

 _Force,_ she’s gotta stop letting Rose bully her into watching those far-fetched holodramas about alternate dimensions and rips in time and space.

Or he’s really here, and her senses aren’t lying when she clasps his hand and feels the rough calluses against his palm and studies the tiny, white burn marks that match the ones on her own hands, the ones left by lightsabers when blades collide and the sparks light on exposed skin. The scars left by countless wire burns and rusted edges of scrap metal, scars left from hikes through the jungles of strange, deserted moons. Maybe her senses aren’t lying to her when she catches his scent, soil and sweat and engine grease. 

Kiran gives her a long look. 

“I can try to explain it, if you like. 

“I’d like that,” Rey says. She studies him. The shadows are still there, and something else. Something nagging at him, and it's becoming more insisted, more unignorable. 

“What have I done?” she whispers. She can feel the conflict in him. Like his father, everything lies dangerously close to the surface and she can see it chase across his face. Something is shifting. He’s trying to make room for her, trying to recover the part of his life he associates with her, but something in him is resisting. Something tells her she hasn’t been a part of his life for a long time. 

He shakes his head. 

“Nothing that cannot be undone.”

He rubs the bridge of his nose absently. 

“It’s an ability I inherited from you. And Dad. An ability I’ve polished over the years. To go backwards and forwards in time.” He worries his lip. “You see, I just stepped through a door. A door into a different timeline. This timeline. It’s dangerous. Unnatural, but it . . . it was the only way. I had to try.” His lip trembles. 

“Try . . . ?”

“To save you,” he says, “and Dad.” 

“From the explosion?” she asks. 

“That’s part of it,” Kiran says. “See, when I go back, I permanently alter the timeline I travel to. I set off a new sequence of events. Forking paths, if you will. This is one variation. And there are infinite variations. Sometimes you live. Sometimes you die. Sometimes I’m never born at all. It took me years to trace it all back to the point where all paths meet. A point I could safely visit without changing the course of events too drastically. 

“See, this variation, you died in the explosion. I came back to save you, but there’s still more that needs to happen. Things need to change, to rearrange themselves and form new pathways. In another variation, you survived. You fled. You tried to protect me by hiding me, instead of risking your life to kill her. You raised me, kept me hidden, but she never stopped searching. She got into my head. Dad tried to go after her, but you insisted on going with him. You left to confront her, and she lured you into a trap."

Kiran studies the floor. 

"I lost you, that day," he tells her. "I lost you both."

Rey grips his hand so tightly her knuckles turn white and bloodless. 

“After you died, I stayed with Finn. He protected me, did the best he could to raise me, but it was only a matter of time before she found me. And she did. She came for me.” 

It’s hurting her head to think about the intersecting timelines, the things that have already happened for him and the things she has left to do, the time she’s lost and the time she still has, the things she must change, the amends she must make. 

“Kiran—” Rey begins, but he cuts her off, plowing through. He trips over his words, like he thinks the faster he gets it out the faster he can forget it. Rey never lets go of his hand. 

“She spared my life. Maybe something changed. Maybe she saw something in me, I dunno. Somehow, she decided I was more use to her alive than dead. She trained me, polished me, made me into something she could wield. Like a weapon.

“I trusted her. Stupidly. It took me years to realize the truth. That she’d taken you from me. That she was using me.”

Tears glitter in his eyes. 

Rey gathers him up in her arms. He deflates, all semblance of composure disintegrating as he pours himself into her arms. 

It’s all there. The manipulation, the lies. The lies the Empress had told him, lies that contradicted everything he remembered of her. Lies he’d begun to believe. She feels him resisting, even now. Not hard enough. She senses his resolve shattering as he allows himself to be held by her. His body molds into hers. It’s like muscle memory. It’s like breathing. 

She is the unignorable reminder of the boy he used to be before he tried to bury it all. Before he tried to forget. Before he started serving a new master on the false promise that she’d bring them back if he cooperated. If he kept himself in line. 

His memories brush against the walls of Rey’s mind. 

When she holds him, he could be eleven again. Suddenly, she’s seeing the world through his eyes. She is the boy he was when he read the unspeakable in Finn’s eyes. She hears Finn’s voice through the haze of time, through the weight of the truth he already knows, the truth he cannot accept. 

_I’m sorry, Kiran._ Finn says. His voice is alien. Hollow. _They’re gone._

Rey feels his pain, feels him break into a million glass shards. He did break, that day. The day he lost them both. His whole world. Cut down in one fell swoop. And they’d done it to protect him. 

It was his fault. 

All his fault. 

He broke, alright. He hasn’t been whole since. 

The memory chews Rey up and spits her out, leaving her feeling ragged and raw. In its wake, an icy chill settles in her veins. 

She’d been taken out of his life too early. She’d left him, and he’d never quite forgiven her. Just like he hadn’t forgiven himself. 

No. She can’t think about that. The future could be changed. She can still save him, maybe even save herself. And if she must die, well, she can prepare him, at least. She can prepare him to stand on his own two legs. 

She kisses the space between his eyes. It’s isn’t too late for the boy in her arms, just like it isn’t too late for the baby in her belly. 

She runs her fingers through his hair

“Oh, my baby boy . . .” Rey whispers, fighting back sobs. 

“I love you, Mom,” he says, voice cracking. “I never got to say it enough.” 

She holds him tight enough to believe she could keep him there and keep him safe. 

“I know, baby,” she whispers. “I know.” 

She kisses his cheek. “I love you too. More than you know.” 

Kiran composes himself. He breaks away, wiping his face, nose and eyes reddened with tears. He continues recounting his story, breathless, words punctuated by hiccuping sobs and stammering breaths. 

“When I came to my senses, I turned. I tried to kill her, but she was too strong. She took a piece of me.” 

Kiran pulls up his pantleg, revealing a cybernetic contraption where skin and bone should be. Rey bites her lip, going cold at the sight of the mechno leg. Nauseated, her eyes graze the place just above his knee where the skin grafts to the metal in lumpy, knotted scar tissue, violent and stark against his milky skin. 

Rey clamps a hand over her mouth, choking back a sob.

“Does it hurt?” she asks, in a small voice. Absurdly, it’s her who feels like a child, shrinking in the wake of the ghastly injury. Her smallness is soon, replaced, however, with anger. She’d like nothing more than to relieve the Empress of _both_ her legs for the scars she’d left. Rey’s not fool enough to recognize that the worst scars lie where she cannot see. 

Kiran smiles. 

“Not anymore.” 

“I escaped with my life, and one less leg,” Kiran says. “I hid. I knew I couldn’t stop her. I knew that even if I did, it wouldn’t bring you back. It wouldn’t bring me peace. That’s when I knew what I had to do.” He fixes his gaze at some invisible point behind her head. He’s inside himself, and she knows nothing she could say would ever reach him. Not really. 

She’s been gone a long time. 

“I knew I had to go back to the beginning. I had to warn you before it was too late. The moment you chose to run instead of confronting her, you sealed your fate. I had to undo that choice." 

"What do I have to do, then?" 

"You have to kill her. She underestimated you, and she knows it. If you don't kill her, she'll kill you. She won’t attack until she’s made herself invincible. Once she’d done that, she’ll draw you out, and when you’re cornered, she’ll crush you. You have to kill her while she’s vulnerable." 

"How?" 

"She’s waiting for you on the island.” 

“The island?” Rey repeats, puzzled. 

_At night, desperate to sleep, you dream of an ocean . . ._

“Ahch-To. I’ve convinced her to rendezvous there. She’ll be exposed. Alone. If you can get there in time, you can beat her. But you can't do it alone." 

“I don’t—” 

“You have to save Dad. You have to bring him back." 

“How?” 

“The same way I’m speaking to you now. By walking through a door.” 

Rey’s breath catches. 

“The mirror . . .” 

It all begins to slide into a place, like a puzzle. Kiran had given her the last piece.

“It’s a portal. It leads to—” 

_“—the world between worlds,”_ Kiran finishes. "Yes." 

“What about you? Where will you go?”

“My time’s almost up. I don’t belong here. 

“Kiran—” 

“As far as this universe is concerned, I haven’t been born yet. In a few minutes, I’ll be gone.” 

“Will I see you again?” 

“If everything goes right, yes. In another lifetime.” 

Rey reaches up, brushing at the stubborn wave of coal-black hair that keeps falling in his eyes. 

He catches her hand. 

“I never got to say goodbye,” he says. “Not properly.” 

“Stay,” Rey pleads. 

“I’ll be with you,” he says, squeezing her hand. 

“Just so you know, the time we did have . . . it was worth it. All of it. We had our ups and downs. Everyone does. But most of it was good.” 

Rey smiles, too drained to afford any more tears. She feels them, though. In body and soul, she weeps for him. For her family. 

“I’m sorry I left so soon.” 

“You can’t blame yourself. You were trying to protect me.” 

“I’m still trying to protect you.” 

“I know.” He smirks. “Dad always said you were the most stubborn person he’d ever met. You were the only person who had the guts to tell him no. Well, you and Grandma. He said that’s why he fell in love with you.” 

“Well, someone had to take him down a peg,” Rey says, with a thin laugh. 

She caresses his face. “You take after him,” she says. “In more ways than you realize.” 

“I see him in you.” 

He smiles. It lights up his whole face, and Rey aches to see it pass so quickly, aches to see the solemnity returning, pulling at his whole body, like he’s trying to shrink into the floor. 

His hand goes to his chest. He unfastens the twine around his neck and presses the kyber crystals into Rey’s palm. He clasps her hand, closing her fingers around them. 

“Take this.” 

Rey peers at the pair of crystals in her palm. One belongs to her . Or _belonged_. (This whole time-travel thing is really driving a nail through her skull.) She can assume who the other belonged to. She struggles to work out the knots in her throat, trying to get words out. 

“That’s the only piece of you I had left,” he explains. “I don’t need it anymore.” He looks at her. A tear cuts a path down his cheek. 

She peers at the crystals in her palm, reaching up to fasten the twine around her neck. She tucks the crystals inside her shirt, where they lie cold against her skin, over the place where her heart beats. 

“Thank you,” she says, voice breaking. She opens her mouth to say more, to try to make him understand how much she loves him, that all this has been for him, that she’d protect him if it cost her her life. Before she can speak, the door to her compartment opens with a bang and a medic shuffles into the room, and Kiran vanishes before her eyes. 

* * *

  
  


Rey sits in the cockpit, running diagnostics and fielding Finn’s questions. She’d permanently lost the hearing in her right ear in the explosion. It’s a disorienting sensation, one she’ll have to get used to. She has to keep tilting her head to catch whatever Finn’s angrily muttering under his breath. She thanks the Force that’s the only thing she lost. 

“I don’t feel good about this, Rey.”

She rolls her eyes. 

“When do you ever feel good about _anything_?”

After they’d taken her out of the bacta tank, after she’d been well enough to stay conscious for more than a few minutes at a time, Finn attacked her with questions. He’d been gentle at first, treading carefully, as if she were a fragile thing, as if one misstep could break her. But eventually his impatience won out, and he’d pestered her, determined to get out of her what really happened down in that mountain. He doesn't dare say _I told you so_ , but it's in the subtext. He does, however, waste no time calling her crazy for wanting to put herself in yet another line of fire. 

He had a point. 

“I thought I really lost you, that time,” he kept saying, and she wishes he’d stop. She already felt stupid for falling in that trap. She didn't need him to shove her face in it. 

She’d done her best to answer his questions, more to shut him up than anything, recounting everything that happened deep in the mountain. Of course, it doesn’t help that she isn’t sure what was real and what wasn’t. She elects to keep her encounters with Kiran to herself, omitting that particular bombshell for fear he’d think she’d gone mad. 

_He already does,_ she’d reasoned, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell him about her time-travelling son from the future. 

"Seriously, Finn. You never feel good about any mission." 

Finn huffs an exasperated sigh. She knows he still strongly opposes this mission, but he’s starting to recognize he’s fighting a losing battle. 

"Yeah, and I still let you drag me down with you. Why do I let you?" 

“You don’t have to come. In fact, I’d rather you stay." 

“No, I’m coming. I don’t like it, but I’m not letting you go alone.” She knew there was no changing his mind. _Compromise_ , she thought, trying to calm the nausea in her gut. _That’s why this works._

“It’s gonna be okay,” Rey says, reaching for his hand. She gives it a squeeze. 

“How d’you know that?” 

“I’ve got a good feeling about this.” 

Finn cocks an eyebrow. 

“That’s a first.” 

He leans over the console, setting the coordinates for Ahch-To, and she knew everything would be alright. 

En route, Rey nurses a mug of dishwater caf and lets Finn puzzle out the likelihood of there being a trap laid out for them the minute they enter Ahch-To’s atmosphere. She tries to quell his concerns. Though there’s a degree of validity to his reservations, nothing’s gonna stop her from getting there. One way or another. 

She reaches up to tie back what’s left of her scorched hair in a haphazard bun. 

She’d been right about Vandor. There _had_ been something for her there. Something she had to see, and she’d seen it. 

Rey runs the pad of her thumb over the surface of the purple kyber crystal in her hand. She still imagines she can feel the shape of Kiran’s tall, gangling frame. She imagines she can still feel every barrier he’d built up to protect himself from the world’s cruel realities come crashing down at her touch. 

Rey lays a hand on her belly, silently repeating every promise she’d ever made him, thinking of Ahch-To, of the mirror beneath the island. 

Something’s waiting for her in that darkness. Something that’s going to shift the ground she walks on. For better or worse, she doesn’t know. What she does know is that once she sets foot on that island, there’s no going back. 

* * *

The island’s silhouette looms in the distance. It’s sunrise on the ocean planet, but you wouldn’t know it; dark thunderheads obscuring the sky, pregnant with rainwater and flashing white as strikes of lighting crack against the gray. Rain plinks against the viewport and harsh wins barrage the Falcon's hull. Finn is white-knuckling the yoke as he attempts to navigate the hostile atmosphere. Rey directs him to the landing strip on the east side of the island—a slab of rock polished and weathered by years of tide activity, and the only landmark on the island resembling anything remotely flat. The rest is rocky slopes, steep ravines, and mountainous terrain. 

She gazes at the rocky archipelago rising out of the ocean and the restless, steel-gray waves gnawing at its shores. It’s exactly as she remembers it. The weather is almost never pleasant, and there are one too many opportunities to plummet to your death off a slippery cliffside. And gods, don’t even get her started on the _porgs_ . The birds are nothing but messy nuisances. She’s pretty sure they share a single brain cell between the whole lot of them, and that’s _hoards_ , crammed in every crevice. Her stay on the island with Master Luke had lent itself to countless hours wasted scraping bird shit out of the Falcon’s ventilation system for weeks afterward. 

The _Falcon coasts_ inland. Finn curses as he makes the landing, and Rey can almost hear Han yelling at them, threatening to _make them a wampa's breakfast if I find so much as a scratch on her!_ The _Falcon's_ prime had long since past. The only reason it still go off the ground at all was through sheer stubbornness. She was a scrappy, haphazard collection of mismatched parts, but that never stopped Han from doting on her. Leia used to joke that the Falcon was the closest thing Han ever had to a mistress. 

Rey pulls on a rain slicker and steps off the ramp. Her boots sink a little in the rain-softened soil. She turns her face toward the sky, letting the droplets kiss her skin. The wind is at her back, running her hands over the weapons at her belt. She plants herself, arms outstretched, palms toward the sky, and reaches into the Force. She reads the tides surrounding the island.

She senses the darkness beneath the island, and it greets her like an old friend. She feels the momentum of the waves like she’s caught in the storm, feels the crackle of electricity loose in the sky like some fundamental part of herself, the part that scares her. She feels the ebb and flow of life, the births and deaths, the nocturnal creatures stirring in the brush, the crustaceans clinging to the black rocks and hollowed tide pools, the flowers with their petals folded up against the blustering cold. Some sea monster slumbers under the surface, a few klicks from the shore. 

All these things fade into a background chorus. Rey sifts through it all with nimble fingers. There are memories here, too. Some belong to her. Some belong to the Jedi long before her, so ancient she no longer understands the language. But their voices are there, and they beckon her. 

And Luke. 

Luke’s presence is everywhere. 

She hadn’t gotten anywhere with him during their brief time together. He’d been determined to destroy everything the Jedi stood for. She hadn’t understood, then, but time and war had worn away the edge. He’d started to make a whole lot of sense. 

In death, he’d made himself into a much more prominent presence in her life. Memories flood to the surface. Standing on the island, his refuge (maybe refuge is too soft a word, but she doesn’t know any other word that comes close to what this island had been for him. A deathbed, maybe.) for more than seven years, it’s hard to forget that wizened face. The way it had softened at the edges all the times he’d come to her after she’d reduced herself to tears trying to decipher the damned sacred texts. All the times she’d felt the gentle brush of a presence when she felt particularly led astray, or after Kylo’s petulance, his constant invasions were particularly wearing on her. Kylo had consumed her in every sense, and she’d tried to fight it. 

She remembers a heavy arm wrapped around her shoulder, keeping her safe. She remembers soft blue light and a crinkled laugh. She remembers watching that cybernetic hand bouncing absently on his knee as he told her stories from the rebellion, about Wedge Antilles and Lando Calrissian and all the old heroes, about Leia’s early wisdom and Han’s compassion. He talked about his students, too, though she knew it pained him. Especially the topic of one student in particular, though their conversations almost always found their way back to him. One way or another.

If Luke had anything to say about it, he held his tongue. Rey tried to make excuses. Tried to pass off her confounding preoccupation with Ben Solo as _strictly_ business. She had to know her enemy inside and out if she was going to beat him, after all. If he suspected the real reason behind her fixation, well, he didn’t let it show.

She was grateful. She thought she would die of mortification if he ever said anything on the matter. It would almost be worse than admitting to herself the things she felt for him. Almost. 

She misses Master Luke now more than ever. He was her grim grinning ghost and she leaned on him more than she realized. 

“Luke?” Rey asks, not daring to hope. Sure enough, there’s only the sound of the rain, the crack of distant lightning. 

No ghosts. 

Finn puts a hand on her shoulder. 

“Come on,” he says gently, with a soft look. “Let’s finish this.” 

They begin the climb, picking their way over the slick staircase carved into the terrain. Rey keeps her senses firmly tuned to the Force, monitoring for changes. The Empress is here. She can feel her presence, a strange, impenetrable force. It’s neither darkness nor light but something in between. It’s not balanced, though. Never balanced. It’s eating itself, self-destructing. 

It doesn’t feel at all like the Ben’s darkness. Ben’s darkness was familiar. She’d expected it to be cold and painful, but it was the opposite. It was like returning to a childhood home. It was like finding something she didn’t know she was missing. It was like standing in the presence of a rare and wild animal. It was like venturing somewhere no one else dared to set foot, only to find a hidden beauty.

It was seductive in its intensity. 

Ben had waged a careful battle against a parasitic darkness feeding on him. The Empress contains a darkness like fire consuming itself to stay lit. She’s killing herself trying to fill a hole. But whatever she seeks dangles just out of reach. She’s been shoved to the bottom so many times, there are too many bruises to count. There’s some deep scars there, but they are buried much too deep to glimpse.

For the first time, a pang of sympathy rises in Rey, unbidden. She bites her lip, a bit of dread sinking to the pit of her stomach.

“What is it?” Finn asks, sharply. He must’ve sensed something shift in her. Some terror. 

It's so much harder for her to hate something she understands. It's why she couldn't hate Kylo. He'd been in her head, and he'd made too much sense. She couldn't bring herself to hate something so broken. 

Rey realizes her hands are shaking. 

“Nothing,” she says, pushing the clumps of damp hair back from her face. She shoves her hands deep in the pockets of her rain slicker. Anything to disguise the shaking. 

“She’s close.” 

“Does she know you're here?” 

“Yes.” 

She must. 

Rey quickens her pace, consumed with a strange, deadly calm despite what her trembling hands and chattering teeth might indicate. She tells herself it’s just the cold. It may be her lousiest lie yet, but it doesn’t matter. This is the end. She’s done running. She’s reached the end of her race. And if these are her final steps, well . . . 

She’ll rise and take them. 

The terrain begins to flatten out. They reach the village. It’s unchanged. There’s no sign of the fish nuns; Rey guesses they’ve all taken cover from the storm. Good. She’s not too keen to face them, anyway. After she put a blaster bolt through one of the buildings in their sacred village. The last thing she needs is their silent looks of disapproval burning holes in her back as she descends into the literal heart of darkness. 

“Rey,” Finn cries, in hushed tones, grabbing her arm. She whirls around, lightsaber at the ready. Finn points across the village. “There.” 

A fire burns in one of the huts. Rey nods, pressing her finger to her lips. She motions for him to follow. She makes her way across the cobbled clearing, slick with muddy puddles, on silent feet. She’s grateful for the storm. The pounding of torrential rains against the rock provides sufficient cover to drown out the noise of her footsteps. 

She approaches the hut. Crouching with every muscle poised to spring, she gives herself three seconds. _One, two . ._

Unleashing a war cry, she wrenches the door off its hinges. It groans as it peels away. Blades ignited, Rey bursts into the hut, ready to strike. 

It’s empty. 

A fire crackles in the heart. There’s a cot with a shabby bedroll on the wall, and a mess of trinkets and gadgets filed on shelves carved into the stone. 

This is Luke’s hut. _Was._

Rey lets her arms drop to her sides, blades extinguishing. 

Who built this fire? It must’ve been the Empress. There’s no one else on this island. That means she’s close by. Hiding? Planning an ambush? 

"Who's been here?" Finn asks, voicing her concerns. Rey doesn't answer. 

Rey smoothes her wet hair back, tugging at the sleeve of her jacket. She shuffles over to the stone shelves, eyes roving over the rusted kettle, and something resembling a rudimentary condenser. She makes to pick up a little wooden tauntaun figure. It’s jagged, made with a crude hand. A child’s hand, perhaps. She turns it over, running her thumb over the rough wood. She feels a certain fuzziness at the edges of her mind, like the beginnings of a memory. Her surroundings begin to blur. Rey braces, waiting for the hut to dissolve, waiting for that sickening haze of memories to start flashing before her eyes, but she stays planted on the floor of the hut. 

“It’s not much,” Luke says, “but it kept the weather off.” 

Rey turns on her heel. 

"Holy shit," Finn breathes.

“Master Luke,” Rey says, gazing at her former master. Her heart crawls into her throat like it's got eight, furry legs. 

“Hello, Rey,” he says. “I didn’t want you to have to come back to this miserable rock, but fate leads us down many unexpected paths.” 

Rey smiles. 

“Don’t I know it.” 

Luke’s mouth twitches.. He places a hand on her shoulder, and she can feel the warm weight of it despite his insubstantial form. 

“It’s good to see you.” 

His gaze falls to the tauntaun in her hand. She holds it out to him, and he takes it, turning it over in his fingers with an air of solemnity. Maybe sorrow. 

“I didn’t know you were a woodworker,” she says. “New hobby?” 

“This?” Luke laughs. “This is the work of my nephew.” 

The smile slips off Rey’s face. He hands the figure back to Rey. She closes her fist around it, feeling something snap, inside her. Something coming undone. 

“He gave me that for my thirty-second birthday,” Luke says. “He was eight. Han had given him a carving set over the holidays, Force knows why. He liked making the creatures from the picture encyclopedia on his datapad.” Luke chuckles. “He was quite an artist, before—” Luke stops, abruptly, looking pained. Perhaps, even in death there are things too painful to revisit.

_Before he turned._

_Before_ **I** _betrayed him._

The words echo in her mind, as clearly as if he’d spoken them aloud. She wonders if he meant for her to hear them. She touches his shoulder gently. 

Luke meets her gaze, and she reads an urgency in his eyes that wasn’t there before. 

“You don’t have much time.” 

“Any last words of advice?” 

Luke smiles a secret kind of smile. 

“You have everything you need.” 

Rey rolls her eyes, but she can’t keep the smile off. She hadn’t expected anything else from him. Before she can say anything, the low whine of an engine cuts through the storm’s roar. 

“Rey, we have to go," Finn says, placing a hand on her shoulder. 

Rey slips the tauntaun into her pocket. She throws a backwards glance over her shoulder. Luke’s gone. Somehow, that reassures her. She has to do this on her own. 

She ducks into the storm alongside Finn, boots slapping against the slick, cobbled ground. She cranes her neck toward the sky, searching for the source of the engine-noise. 

In the sky, toward the west, a ship cuts through the thunderheads. Its lights shrink to pinheads as it climbs in the sky. Rey watches it pitch in the wind, bluebell flames erupting from the thrusters. 

Rey lifts her hand, seizing hold of the ship. The metal groans and creaks as the ship hangs suspended in the air. The engines whine, thrusters glowing orange now, overheating as the ship strains against Rey’s grasp. 

With a furious cry, Rey uses her entire strength, her entire self, to down the ship. With a sigh, the thrusters extinguish, and the ship tips toward the ground, spinning like a top on its way down. It cracks like an egg on the rocks below. Rey watches a plume of smoke rise in the air. Debris and torn metal litter the shore’s jagged teeth. The electrical components spark and catch flame. 

"Stay here," Rey says, and then she's taking off down the mountain, blood churning in her ears, boots slipping over rain-slick rocks with her saber clutched in bloodless fingers. She stops when she reaches the rocks. The fiery wreckage is smoking, sizzling as the rain stamps out the tongues of flame licking at the hull of the Empress’ shuttle. Her eyes skim the debris, searching the Force for signs of life. 

At first, she thinks it’s done. The Empress is dead, and she’s free. But she’s wrong. Something’s stirring. The life signs are weak, but undeniable. Rey’s debating the quickest route over the rocks, toward the ship’s smoking corpse, when a hunk of metal, a chunk of the ship’s console, flies toward her head. Rey puts an invisible wall between herself and the debris as it careens toward her. It buoys off Rey’s Force-barrier and lands with a defeated _thunk_ in a shallow, ocean pool a few yards away. It shorts out, leaking a foul-smelling smoke from the water damage to the electrical system. 

Rey surveys the wreckage, feet planted and saber poised, waiting. A woman’s slender form materializes in the smoke. Her clothes are torn and smoldering. One side of her face is cut. Deeply. The scythe-like wound stretches from the corner of her eye to her chin, and blood pours down her front. 

“ _You_ ,” the Empress spits. “You are hard to get rid of.” 

“You are hard to find,” Rey returns, evenly. She ignites her blades warningly as the Empress draws nearer. 

“You’ve met my apprentice,” she says. “He has forgotten the scars you gave him. He is too quick to forgive.” She smiles an ugly, torn smile. “It makes him weak.” 

“No. It makes him strong.” Rey smiles. “He has his father’s heart.” 

“Not yours, though,” the Empress remarks, her voice is pesticide and stale candy. “Yours is cold and hard. You never could love him enough. You were too afraid. Too afraid to lose him. It was inevitable, of course. And who did he turn to, when he realized you couldn’t give him when he needed? When he realized you couldn’t protect him. When you couldn’t keep your promise. Who did he turn to?” 

“You know.” She grins, eyes flashing. “Say it.” 

Rey is silent. She turns her blades over and over in her hands, trying to shake off the douse of frigid water crashing over her head at her words. 

The Empress clicks her tongue, shaking her head. 

“He turned to me. He had nowhere else to go. By the time I found him, he ran straight into my arms. He needed you, and you failed him.” 

“You think your silver tongue will keep you alive?” Rey asks. “You’re wrong. One of us won’t be walking away from this island. Let’s finish this.” 

“Are you sure that’s a price you’re willing to pay? Your life? Your son’s life?”

“I’ve paid far more than my share, already.” 

“If you strike me down, you’ll never wash your hands of me.” 

“What’s another stain?” Rey says. “If you kill me, the stains on your hands will be far worse.” 

“We’ll see.” 

“Why are you doing this?” 

“It’s time for the Jedi to end. And the Sith. And the Republic. And the Empire. It’s time for a new dynasty.” 

_Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to._

“You’d destroy it all for power?” 

“I’d destroy it all for peace,” the Empress says. She gestures to Rey. “You are the only thing standing in my way.”

“You’re deluded. You think that's the only thing standing in your way? The galaxy will resist. People will fight.” 

“They are tired of your lies, Jedi. Tired of your hypocrisy. Tired of your bloodstains. Tired of high-brow sycophants and trigger-happy radicals willing to risk unspeakable civillian casualities. Tired of the legacy they left behind, of the enormous price they must pay to keep that legacy alive. Why do you insist on keeping such a broken system in power? So you and your ghosts can keep weilding laser swords? So you can keep worshipping a heartless god? For what? To keep the peace?” She laughs coldly. “I’ll show you _peace_.” 

She spits at Rey’s feet.

“The galaxy is tired of fighting your battles, Jedi. Mothers and fathers have lost their children in your war. Children have lost mothers and fathers. The Republic thrives on oppression. It’s corrupt. It’s weak. You think you can change things? You’re powerless.” 

“You’re a monster.” 

“That’s where you're thinking sensibly, Jedi,” she says. Her smile is a grimace, now, her face ghastly white. “I _am_ a monster.” She steps towards Rey, moving like a phantom across the tide pools, the wreckage, the flame. Her tongue darts out, wetting her dark lips. She’s close enough now to whisper in Rey’s ear. _“I’m you _.”_ _

The Empress bares her teeth, a deep-throated chuckle building in the back of her throat. “You think you’re the only monster Palpatine created? You think Palpatine sat and twiddled his thumbs when your parents refused to sell you out? No. If he couldn't have you, he found a new pawn." 

“I don’t—” 

“He did . . . _unnatural_ things. He made me. A doe-eyed child serving a cruel god. Your parents saved you. Who do you think saved me?” 

“You’re his heir.”

“No. _You_ are his heir. Can you believe that? A scavenger from _Jakku_. Me? I wasn’t afforded such a luxury.” 

“What are you, then?” 

“I’m just a body. I’m just bits and pieces, a pound of flesh. A _puppet_.” 

“A clone.” 

“Precisely.”

“I wanted him to love me so badly. I wanted him to accept me for who I was. He always wanted more. He took from me. He took everything. Everything I was.” 

“I should really be thanking you. You killed him before I got the chance to.” 

“Why are you doing this? You don’t serve a master. Not anymore. Why carry on his legacy? 

“I’m destroying his legacy. _You_ are his legacy. The child you carry . . . your entire bloodline must end.

“You understand, now, why it must be done. Your death is necessary. Prosperity, change, _peace_. . . none of it is possible without sacrifice.” 

“Peace achieved by spilling innocent blood is not peace at all.” 

“It’s necessary.” 

“If you do this, you’re no better than him.” 

“I have to do this.” Her voice wavers. She says it like she’s trying to convince herself, more than anything. Rey senses a gap in her resolve. A weakness. 

She chases it. 

“You don’t have to do this. I know the scars he left on you are too deep. I know you think this is the only way out. It isn’t. You can turn. I’ll help you.” 

“I can’t.” 

To her surprise, the Empress’ eyes are bright with tears. 

“You can. I’ve seen it before. I’ve seen strength I hadn’t thought possible until I witnessed it firsthand. I’ve seen people go to great lengths to do what’s right. I’ve seen enormous feats of bravery. I’ve seen people break from the bondage of their abusers. I’ve seen redemption. A man who believed he spent his whole life believing he was something unnatural, a _monster_ , was still capable of love. He was still capable of sacrificing everything, body and soul, for another person. You are stronger than you think. You’re stronger than he led you to believe. Because the truth is, there’s no such thing as good people or bad people. They’re just people. You have a choice.” 

“It’s too late for me.” 

“No.” Rey shakes her head. “It’s not. He’s still feeding off you. He’s still inside you, using you. He’s turning you against yourself. You need to cut him out.” 

“Like _you_ cut him out?” 

“I’m trying to,” Rey says, voice trembling. “But I’m only human. I’m fragile. I’m weak.”

The tauntaun statue jabs her hip where it rests in her pocket. Kiran’s crystals are heavy around her neck. She thinks she feels Ben’s fingers slip into the spaces between her own. She gives his hand a squeeze. 

“I try to save who I can, and the rest . . .” Rey shakes her head, eyes welling with tears. “I try to do them justice. I try to preserve their memory. I try to carry on their legacy. I’m not perfect, but I try.

“And you’re right. I’m a hypocrite. I’m a liar. I’m too quick to save my own skin. I let the man I love risk his life for me before he had the chance to live. To _really_ live. I weaseled my way into his family, became their token child. The family that threw him away like space trash. Like my family threw me away. You think my parents _saved_ me? They left me. The fact that they didn’t have a choice doesn’t change the fact that I spent every day for almost fifteen years living a lie. Alone. Waiting for someone who was never coming back. But you’ve gotta accept the scars people leave. I know they’re ugly. I know they hurt, but you’ve gotta force yourself to stitcht them up before you can move on. I’ve dealt with my scars. They’re knotted and ugly and still healing, yes, but they’re part of who I am. 

“So you were right about me. I am a monster. But I can forgive myself for it. I’m human. I’m a mother, and I made a promise. I’ll protect my child if it means I add another ghost to my attic. And if I fail, if it means they find my cold, dead body when the storm passes, at least he’ll know I fought for him.

“I’m done wrecking everything I touch. I’m done hurting the people I love. I don’t want to kill you. I will if I have to, but I won’t enjoy it. Which is why I’m asking you to join me.” 

Rey extinguishes her blades. She lets her weapon drop to the ground with a thud. She offers her hand. 

“It’s not too late. Leave it all behind. Come with me.” 

Tears stream down the Empress’ face. Her voice breaks when she speaks. 

“I can’t.” 

“Palpatine can’t hurt you, just like he can’t hurt me. He’s just a ghost."

Rey’s lip trembles. 

"We are more than he intended. We’re more than he made us out to be. He underestimated us.” 

A tear slips down her cheek. 

“Please. It’s not too late.” 

The Empress shifts her weight. Her arm jerks, seemingly off its own accord. She’s warring with herself. Rey can see it in her eyes. She reaches out, fingers outstretched, eyes shining with tears. 

And then Rey’s lightsaber soars into her hand. Rey lifts her hand to defend herself. There’s a flash of yellow, a distant scream, and something hot. Something _gushing_. 

Someone's screaming her name. 

And then she’s staggering backward, plunging into darkness. 

Plunging into water. 

* * *

She floats in and out consciousness, sinking in the dark cesspool beneath the island. There’s blood in the water. A lot of it. It gets in her mouth, her nose. She coughs, kicking furiously toward the surface, but she can’t make it, it’s too far. She tries to paddle, and that’s when the pain begins. It grows from a dull roar to something piercing. Agony like she’s never imagined. 

There's something very wrong 

Rey kicks blindly. Somehow, she reaches the surface. By then, she’s combating big blots of darkness in her vision. Her stomach roils sickeningly, and she would scream if it weren’t for all the water in her lungs. Her brain’s keeping a final barrier between itself and the full brunt of the pain. If it weren’t, she would’ve blacked out by now. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt like nothing she’s ever felt. It’s hot and wet and piercing, like something monstrous biting at her arm, tearing flesh.

Rey kicks toward the shore. She’s not a skilled swimmer and regrettably so, but she thinks even if she were a Gungan in wouldn’t make any difference. She hits the rock and clings to it. She doesn’t want to look. She can’t look. 

Her thoughts are scattered, now, and her breaths come in quick, short gasps. There’s so much blood. 

Steeling herself, she peers at the space where her hand should be. It’s gone, completely severed below the elbow. She can see the mass of cauterized flesh. The world sways sickeningly, and Rey clings to the rock. She hoists herself up, collapsing on the stone. The cave swims in and out of focus. She hears a distant splash and knows the Empress must’ve come down after her once she’d resurface. 

_“No,”_ Rey coughs. She drags herself to her knees, blearily scanning the water. The Empress surfaces. She climbs onto the far bank, still wielding Rey’s saber. She makes her way across the cave to where Rey kneels on the ground, clutching the stump of her arm to her chest, ashy gray and losing her grasp on the present. 

The Empress raises the saber. 

Part of Rey wants to let it happen. It would be easier. At least she’d see Ben again. And no more pain. No more deaths. No more heartache. Time drops away. Sensations drop away. Even the pain drops away. There are voices whispering things in her ears but she can’t understand them. It’s just a buzzing that doesn’t diminish. There must be thousands of voices, all blending and weaving together, and they’re all urging her to do one thing:

_Stand up, Rey._

_Stand up and fight._

_Rise, Rey._

She thinks she hears Ben among them. 

_For your son._

The Empress lunges, bringing the lightsaber down over Rey’s head. Rey scrambles to her feet, dodging the blow, raising her remaining hand with a furious cry. 

Hot tongues of blue lightning erupt from her fingers. It costs everything she is. The awful scent of burning flesh fills the cave as billions of electric volts enter the Empress’s body. She falls like a ragdoll onto the damp, stone floor. 

It’s over.

Rey sways on her feet. 

_I’m sorry,_ she tells Ben. She can see him, now. He steps through the mirror, passing through the glass like a ghost. He opens his arms for her, and she doesn’t hesitate to go into them. He gathers her against the wall of his body. There’s no pain, anymore. Only warmth. 

_I’m sorry I couldn’t stay alive for him._

_You did everything you could._

_At least we’re together, this time. At least nothing can touch us._ She reaches up to caress his face, drawing a swirl on his cheek with her blood. 

_I missed you._

Ben smiles. His eyes shine with tears. He takes her face in his hands. 

_Stay with me?_

Rey presses her lips to his inner wrist, to the place where his pulse beats, steady and strong. 

_Until the end._


	34. The Resurrection

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHAT?! 2 chapters in 2 days??? I didn't want to keep you waiting in agony for that HEA any longer, so here it is, folks. Brace yourselves, it's a LONG one. We're about 3-4 chapters out from the end. Thank you for sticking with me through this angsty roller-coaster, and I hope I've done these space idiots justice so far.  
> Enjoy!

_Rise, Rey._

_Rey, wake up._

_Rey!_

Rey opens her eyes. She braces for the pain, but none comes. She groans, pushing herself on hands and knees and then to her feet. 

“Hello?” 

She peers through the milky gray blankness of her surroundings. It moves like water. 

“Ben?”

She turns, and stops short. 

Her reflection stares back at her. Rey jumps, startled by the woman in the glass. She glances down at her body. She’s dressed in a long, elegant dress made of heavy material she cannot name. It has long, loose sleeves and a hem that brushes the tops of her bare feet. It’s dragonskin and coal, blacker than the spaces between the stars. Her hair is clean and sweet-smelling. It falls in a cascade of loose ringlets down her back. Her skin is unblemished. There are no scars, no lumpy, horrid reminders of the wars she fought. She stares down at both her hands, as soft and unmarked as a child’s hands. She is whole. And she is alone. 

Rey turns on her heel, finding herself face to face with a second reflection, and another, and on and on. Like her first visit to the mirror beneath the island, she gets a funny feeling this strange procession is leading her somewhere. She just has to follow. 

The mirror leads her through its depths and to a doorway. It’s durasteel, featureless, with no handle. Lifting her hand, she pulls it open. It groans on sticky hinges. She steels herself, and steps through. 

It opens to stars and sky. So much space, she thinking, passing over the threshold. She lets herself float, bodiless now. There’s no more reflections, no more glass that moves like water. 

“Rey?” 

It's a voice as cool as deep water and just as enigmatic. 

Her head snaps in the direction of the voice. A woman materializes in the darkness. A woman Rey doesn’t recognize, pale-skinned and wearing an elegant gown of shimmering, gold fabric. She approaches Rey, grasping her hand in pale, delicate fingers. Her green eyes pierce Rey. 

“Rey, my child," she breathes, touching her cheek. “Welcome.” 

Rey squints at the woman, at the vague familiarity about her. She tries to place where she’s seen the face before. 

“Who are you?” 

“I have many names. You may call me the Daughter." 

Of course. The statue on Mortis. She’d seen it in dreams, in visions.

"I watch over the souls that make their journey here. I guide them home.” 

“I’m dead." It's not question. 

“Yes.” 

“And my son—?” 

The woman smiles. She turns, motioning to someone Rey cannot see. 

“Well, what are you waiting for?” she calls, softly. “Your mother would like to see you.” 

A little boy of one or two appears, phantom-like, at the woman’s side, clutching her pale hand. Rey’s breath catches. He blinks at her with big, dark, ancient eyes, all chubby cheeks and freckles and bright eyes. 

Rey drops to her knees, choking back a sob. 

“Kiran.” 

She opens her arms, and the toddler rushes into them. He’s crying, and she shushes him, running her fingers through his black hair. 

“You’re safe,” she soothes. “Oh, my baby.”

She gathers him in her arms, rocking him until his sobs turn to faint little hiccups. She hikes Kiran into her arms, settling him on her hip. He locks his arms around her neck, laying his head on her chest. 

Rey turns to the pale, green-eyed woman.

“Where’s Ben?” 

Her smile falters. 

“I’m afraid he isn’t here.” 

“I don’t understand—” 

“—Rey!” 

Luke and Leia appear at her side. She looks between the two of them, some weight lifting from her shoulders. They embrace, and then it’s all limbs and choked sobs and warmth. She steps back, breaking the embrace. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, glancing between them. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do it.” She turns to Leia, taking both the older woman’s hands in hers. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save your son.” 

Leia smiles, shaking her head. 

“My son is alive.” She gazes at Kiran, smile as wide as the sun and just as bright. “May I?” 

“Of course.” Rey hands the boy to his grandmother. Leia laughs, cooing at the infant. 

“He looks like his father,” she remarks, and it’s hard to miss all the pride, the love, in her voice. 

Rey nods. 

“He does.” 

A hand falls on Rey’s shoulder, and she chokes back tears to find Han standing there. He smiles his familiar, lopsided smile. 

“You did good, kid,” he says. “You did real good.” 

She wraps her arms around him. He chuckles, hugging her back. When she breaks away, Han stoops to greet his grandchild, mussing his shock of black hair. Rey thinks her heart might burst. 

Leia turns to Rey, Kiran still clutched in her arms. “Thank you,” she says. “For giving me a grandchild. For saving my son. For giving him everything I couldn’t.” Her lip trembles. She touches Rey’s cheek. “Thank you for making my family whole again.” 

The Daughter takes Rey’s hand, leading her away from Leia, Han and their grandson. 

“We’ve been waiting for you, Rey. Should you choose to stay, you’ll always have a place here.” 

“I have a choice?” 

“There’s always a choice,” the Daughter says. 

“What if I go back?” 

“It won’t be easy. It won’t be kind, but there’s some light to be found in all that darkness, if you know where to look. I think you’ll be able to find happiness, if that’s the path you must follow.” 

“What about Ben? Can I bring him back?” 

The Daughter smiles. “He’s waiting for you. Come.” 

Rey leaves Kiran with one, backwards glance and trails after her. He’ll be safe, she thinks. With his family.

The Daughter passes a hand in a wide arc over empty space. Another door materializes. This one is only semi-corporeal, and a bright, shining white. 

“He’s on the other side of that door.” 

Rey reaches out, brushing it with her fingertips. She looks at the Daughter.

“I’m ready.” 

The Daughter dips her chin, stepping away to let Rey pass. Rey steps through the light. The sickening feeling of falling overtakes her, and then the odd sensation that she has just crashed back into her body. She opens her eyes. There’s a hand over her midriff. She covers it with her own, sitting up. 

Ben gazes down at her, mouth agape, eyes shining with tears. 

She smiles. 

“Ben?” 

A tentative smile eases across his features, softening them. He like he doesn’t dare believe what’s unfolding in his arms. She’s lived through this moment before. It occurs to her that she is the one who’s just been resurrected, not him. It all makes her brain hurt, but it is infinitesimal in comparison to the ecstasy she feels to be gazing at the face inches from her own. He’s really here. Alive and beautiful and all hers. Before she can stop herself, she seals her lips to his. He shifts his arm so it encircles her back, pressing her to him, making her feel safe. Grounded. 

The bond is open, and each tiny, electric sensation that passes through her passes through him, too. When she resurfaces, he looks a little dazed. A little bit like he can’t believe his luck. 

She laughs. He laughs, too, face splitting into that impossible, incandescent smile. She reaches up, caressing the corner of his mouth with her thumb, making sure it’s really him. That he’s really real. 

That’s when his smile starts to fade. His eyes go blank. 

“Ben?” she gasps, clutching his hand to her chest. 

“Ben!” 

_Stay with me._

_Stay with me, please._

He falls, and the weight of his body dragging her down. 

"No," she gasps. She takes his face in her hands, disbelieving. The silence closes in with its sharp teeth bared. This isn't supposed to happen. He promised he'd come back. He promised he'd return to her. He promised he'd help her raise their child. 

Is she cursed to relive this moment again and again, like she does in her dreams? In nightmares?

She leans forward, pressing a wet kiss to his lips. Lips like marble. Cold and unmoving. She holds her breath, praying. 

_Come back to me._

Comebacktomecomebacktomecomebacktome . . . . 

He remains motionless. A knight’s likeness preserved in stone. At rest. At last. 

_“No!_ ” Rey cries. She clenches a fist and hits his chest. _You promised!"_ she screams. "You moof-milking bantha fodder-for-brains _bastard_ , you promised!"

She's vaguely aware that she has well and truly put a toe over the line of hysteria. She curses him, hits him, begging him to stay. Eventually, she collapses over his body, knuckles cracked and bleeding, shielding it from the gritty, dusty darkness of the Sith temple. 

“ _Ben_ ,” she sobs, burying her face in his chest. She runs her fingers through his hair. “Come back to me.”

“He did what I never could,” a voice says, interrupting the terrible, choked animal sounds of her sobbing. She lifts her head, searching for the source of the voice. A young man appears at her side. He kneels, cupping Ben’s cheeks. He tears his eyes away from Ben’s body to look at Rey, a solemn smile pulling at his lips. 

“He saved the one he loved from death.” 

He's young, and familiar. Too familiar. She glances between Ben and the ghost kneeling by her side. They could be brothers. 

It hits her, then.

“Anakin?” 

He nods. 

The boyishness of his features contradicts everything she ever knew about Vader. 

“It’s good to finally meet you, Rey.” 

She smiles through her tears. 

Anakin returns his haze to his grandson. He lays a hand across Ben’s eyes, closing them. He looks at Rey, reaching for her hand. She takes it. 

Anakin grins. A secret sort of grin that transforms his whole face, pulling his lips into a lopsided bow and makes him look even younger. 

“Let’s bring him home.”

* * *

“Rey?” 

She opens her eyes to find Ben peering down at her. She sits up, reaching up to touch his face, his hair, his lips. 

“Ben?” 

“Gods, Rey.” 

He ensnares her in his arms and seals his mouth to hers, a bit desperately, but with a certain sweetness. It’s a kiss fit to make up for an eternity spent apart. In a way, they had.

She’s hand cups his cheek. She holds the kiss for as long as she can, but it's hard. She feels clumsy, like she's spiced-out. Her vision slides in and out of focus. She chokes back a sob. He’s real. 

He’s really here and he’s all hers and they have a lifetime to finally rest. Finally. _Finally_. 

Ben breaks the kiss, pulling back to look at her face like he’s trying to memorize it. 

She’s sobbing and can’t make herself stop. Her shuddering gasps quiet to shallow, uneven breaths. He’s crying, too, running his fingers through her damp tresses. He pulls her into his lap. She can feel a shuddering sob leave his body as he realizes just how gravely injured she is. The white of her blouse is crimson, now. 

“Hold on,” he tells her. 

She’s trying. Gods, she wants to. 

Her vision is beginning to dim. She keeps gazing into his eyes for as long as she can. 

She can feel herself leaving him, leaving this cave, this island. She keeps hold of his hand, knowing if she can just hold on, everything will be alright. 

“Ben,” she says, just to feel his name on her lips. If she’s going to leave this earth, she wants to do it with his name on her lips. 

“I’m right here,” he says, clutching her so tightly, as if he thinks she’s going to fade away. “I’m not going anywhere, Rey. I’m with you, remember? I’m with you.” 

She can't stop the shaking. Her teeth chatter. 

He leans forward, pressing a trembling, wet kiss to the tip of her nose. She can hear his voice breaking, feels his composure crumbling, and his strength with it, hears him cursing her, cursing the Force, cursing everything under the sun. 

“Hold on, Rey.” 

_I love you,_ she tries to say. _And I’m sorry._ She doesn’t quite get the words out, but she knows he feels it.

“Don’t you dare leave me,” he snaps, gripping her hand so tightly it hurts. She shakes her head, shushing him with a trembling, white hand on his cheek, thumb trailing his bottom lip. 

_I’m staying,_ she tells him. 

He nods, his lips against her forehead. 

“I’m with you.” 

It’s the last thing she hears before she drifts away. 

* * *

When she wakes, she’s wearing a flexpoly bacta suit and lying in a pod aboard the _Millennium Falcon_. 

* * *

She dreams of birds. Millions of birds. Big, dark raven birds with obsidian wings reflecting a spectrum of green and purple. They light on her shoulders and arms, talons digging into flesh. She spreads her arms, poised on her toes, but she can’t leave the ground. She begs them to stay, but they leave. One by one, they leave, and she is a bird without wings, and she weeps for the loss of them. 

She dreams of a red crystal. It’s cracked and bleeding, and cold in her hands. 

She dreams of an ocean. It’s full of monsters. Their scaly sides brush against her naked flesh. They bite her, they drag her down. 

She dreams of a desert. Of hot sands that scorch her bare feet to the bone. It’s always day in the desert, and the sun is always white and her skin is red and brown. She curses the sun and prays to the moon, but the moon never answers, so the sun sets her aflame. 

_Rey?_

The world is white-hot behind her eyelids. She eases them open. Her head is foggy, her limbs heavy and body stiff. She takes her time. She counts to sixty and starts again, waiting for the world to swim into focus. 

Slowly, now. 

Slow breaths. 

In. One. Two. Out. 

She’s lying on an elevated bed cot in a wooden hut, made of rubbery, wooden planks bound together by pitch and twine. There’s no door, only a curtain of reeds. A kettle rests over a small fire burning in a hearth on the floor. 

She’d dreamt about the sun and moon. The sun fell in love with the moon, but they couldn’t be together. 

She starts to feel queasy. The world is still too bright, so she closes her eyes. She counts. Sixty seconds. 

She focuses on her body, on her breaths, on the pressure points of her hips and shoulder blades on the cot, on the numbness leaking from her limbs, wiggling each finger and toe. Well, not exactly—

Rey sits up with a jolt, nearly biting off the tip of her tongue. Blood fills her mouth. 

“Ugh,” she grunts, eyes watering. She hucks a wad of pink saliva onto the floor of the hut. 

It’s then she realizes two things. First, that her right hand is gone; her flesh ends four inches below her elbow in a ragged stump wrapped in a thick layer of gauzey bandages. Second, that there’s something clutched in her remaining hand. It takes her a moment longer to realize that something is a hand, and the hand is attached to an arm that is attached to Ben Solo. 

He’s asleep in a chair by her cot, arms folded tightly across his chest, chin lolling. Rey chokes back a sob. Her eyes travel the length of him, hungrily drinking in every inch she can reach, terrified this is just another sick joke. She’s almost sure he’s going to disappear. She holds completely still, as if sudden movements might scare him away. She’s counting again, but the minutes pass and Ben Solo doesn’t disappear. He shifts in his chair, jaw clenched, his eyes dart beneath his eyelids. He mutters something she doesn’t quite catch. 

He’s dressed in an ill-fitting gray uniform with the rebel insignia stitched on the sleeve. It looks like the standard dress for technicians wore around their old base. This one’s shabby and wearing at the edges

She’d always imagined he’d look small without his billowing black cape, but she was wrong. That costume, that darkness, had swallowed him. It always made him look like he was playing at something he wasn’t.

That facade has fallen away. There’s an ease, an openness, about him. She’s seen flashes of it, in quiet moments, but he had always been trying to bury it. While he still sleeps with his fists clenched, his face is almost free of the sharp edges, the shadows that used to haunt him. He looks younger. Content. 

Rey squeezes his hand, needing to see his eyes. She rubs her thumb over his knuckles, coaxing him out of his dreams. 

_Ben._

She brushes against his mind, slipping past his defenses and into the gauzy, shadowed dreamland he’s trapped in. 

_Ben, wake up._

If she thought it would be gentle, she was wrong. 

His eyes fly open, and there’s a kind of terror in them that makes her ache. 

He rises halfway out of his chair, as if he’s expecting an attack, before he realizes there’s nothing to ward off except the dust mites swirling in the streams of sunlight leaking through the window.

He’s at her side in an instant, choking on his tears, and then his arms around her, pulling her against his chest. 

She opens her mouth to say something, anything really, to appropriately phrase how much her heart is singing just to feel him against her, feel his hair between her fingers and the breath in his lungs. She opens her mouth to babble some nonsense and wade through all those gooey feelings, and bursts into tears. They aren’t cute, either. They’re ugly and aggressive and impossibly snotty. 

He shushes her, smoothing her hair.

“Rey,” he whispers. Her name is an incantation on his lips. He says it with a quiet kind of reverence, as if she were a goddess among men. He breaks the embrace, looking upon her face. He strokes the calloused pad of his thumb across her cheek. “Gods, Rey . . .” 

“You’re really here,” she says, dumbly. She shakes her head. “Kriffing hell, Ben Solo.” 

He laughs. A tear clings to the tip of his nose and Rey leans forward, kissing it away, tasting the salt of it. 

“You came back to me,” she says, softly. She takes his hand. He gives it a squeeze. 

“I’m sorry I took so long.” 

Rey frowns, pretending to scrutinize him for a moment.

“Okay,” she deadpans, “I forgive you.” 

Ben laughs. 

“That easy, huh?” 

“Don’t get cocky, Solo.” 

“How do you feel?” 

“Like I got run over by a happbore.” 

“You lost a lot of blood. If the saber hadn’t partially cauterized the wound, you'd be dead. They pumped you full of fluids and stuck you in a pod. You’re lucky you’re alive.” 

Rey grimaces. She looks at the grisly stump where her hand should be. Tears sting her eyes. Finally, a wound to match the brokenness inside. It had been a game of trades. A piece to recover the one she lost. The one she lost when she lost him. 

“It’s okay,” Rey says, drawing a shaky breath, “they’ve got a whole market for cybernetic limbs. Synthetic skin, the whole works. I won’t even feel the difference.” 

She tries for a smile, but it comes out flat. Ben strokes the skin beneath the bandages with an impossibly soft touch. 

“I’ll feel the difference,” he says, and his eyes have a dark look about them. He presses a kiss to the space between her eyes, but he’s far away. 

“Ben?” she asks, taking his hand. He presses his forehead against her, returning to her. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you, _cyar’ika_.” 

“I don’t need you to protect me.” 

“I know. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to.” 

“We’ll protect each other,” she says. She takes his hand and places it on her belly. “We’ll protect him.” 

Ben smiles, closing his eyes. Rey lets her hand trail up his neck, resting two fingers against the pulse that beats steadily beneath his skin. Rey opens herself to the traffic of his thoughts, exploring that familiar life-force that keeps them so inextricably linked, so closely knit it feels like their hearts are keeping time. She reads him, reads the tides and stream of thoughts slipping between the cracks. He welcomes her. 

It’s like sex. He consumes her, tempers her, lifts her up, until she’s exalted in a kind of ecstasy and neither are sure where they end and the other begins. 

She grounds him. Her presence banishes the shadows, like a ray of sun. 

He gives her everything he is. 

He lets her see his torn edges. She lets him see her scars. 

A shudder runs through him, and Rey realizes he’s revisiting the aftermath of her battle, and those moments she’d fought so hard to cling to life. For Rey, it’s a haze of pain and drugs and his voice in her head, urging her to hold on. 

_Just a little longer._

_Rey, I swear to the gods, if I lose you . . ._

_Hold on,_ cyar’ika _. Hold on._

_Hold on, love._

He never let go of her hand. 

She remembers the dreams. They were too vivid, products of the drug cocktail they were pumping through her veins.Twisting corridors and bleached bones half-buried in sun-scorched sands. She’d dreamt of drowning, she’d dreamt she was following a familiar, yet indistinct voice through thick mists. She never found the source of the voice, and she hadn’t realized until later that the voice had belonged to Ben, that he’d reached her as she lay spiced-out on sedatives, and it had seeped into her dreams. 

In the spaces between dreams, as she floated close to the surface, she remembers a blur of activity around her. The Falcon’s engine-whine, indistinct voices, radio chatter as Finn requested clearance to land—where? She didn’t know. She remembers Poe’s face swimming in and out of focus. She remembers voices shouting, _arguing_. Poe and Finn had argued. About what? 

About her. 

About Ben. 

For the first time, she notices the guard posted outside the doorway. He stands with his back to the door. She squints through the curtain. High-grade military boots, the blaster holstered at his hip . . . One of Poe’s war dogs, no doubt. 

Rey frowns. 

_“Kriffing hell,”_ she mutters.

Ben smirks. 

“Don’t get your hackles up,” he says, with a bit of bitter amusement. “Your _Resistance_ friends insisted on the precaution. Out of precedent. Out of concern for your safety.”

 _Resistance_. 

His lips bow awkwardly around the word like it’s a clump of wet cardboard in his mouth. When he speaks, it’s without the usual venom, but it’s still stiff. She can tell he’s trying to temper his dissatisfaction. Trying hard. For her sake. 

“Until they hold a trial to decide my fate, I’m to be confined to a cell or monitored by guards. I fought hard to get them to let me stay with you. They agreed, on the condition that I be supervised by this moof-milker.” He gestures to the guard at his post outside their door with a frown. “This was the compromise. It’s like they think I’m going to murder you the minute they leave you alone with me.” 

“I’ll talk to them,” Rey insists. “I’ll get them to call off their dogs.” 

“I don’t know how much good that’s going to do. Dameron was ready to shuttle in the firing squad.” Ben grimaces. “I hate that man.” 

“If he shot you, he’d have to answer to me. He knows that. Trust me, he won’t lay a finger on you. He's too scared of me.” 

“We’ll see.” He fiddles with the ends of her hair, not looking at her. “FN-2187 talked him into postponing my execution until after I’ve had a fair trial. But don’t be fooled. They _will_ try execute me.” He falls silent, gaze dropping to their clasped hands. When, again, he speaks, his voice is brittle. He sounds a thousand years old. 

“I’ve killed too many of them.” 

Rey doesn’t know what to say to that.

She squeezes his hand. 

“They’re not going to execute you. Not if I have anything to say about it.” 

“I’m afraid your word won’t stand against a bunch of constipated politicians.” He frowns. “God, I hate democracy.” 

She jabs his ribs, playfully. He smiles, but it’s forced. 

“ _Ben_ ,” Rey says, dropping the act. She strokes his cheek. “You’re forgetting who you are. You’re Leia’s son. No one loved Leia more than these people. Killing you would be an insult to her memory.” 

He looks awat, 

“She can’t protect me,” Ben says, in a strained voice. “She’s gone.”

Rey opens her mouth to object, but Ben cuts her off. 

“I’m not stupid, Rey. I know what they think of me. I’ve seen the way Dameron looks at me. Like he’d like nothing more than to introduce his fist to my face.” Ben laughs dryly.He's still not looking at her. “You can tell him I return the sentiment whole-heartedly.” 

_"Hey,"_ she says, taking his face in her hands, forcing him to meet her eyes. “I’ll protect you." 

"Nothings going to touch you while I'm standing." 

Ben smiles. 

“Oh yes, of course, what would I ever do without my pregnant, amputee attack-dog to bite the ankles of my sworn enemies?” 

“I can still kick your ass, Solo. Right here, right now.”

“I know. Why do you think I fell so hard for you, c’yarika?” 

The shadows are gone from his eyes, and Rey can breathe again. She lays her head on his shoulder. He resumes stroking her knuckles. They stay like that for a long while, getting used to being in each other’s presence without a war to wage, without death separating them. This can’t last forever, though she wishes it so. 

Some of the pain begins to return as all the drugs they’ve got her on begins to wear off. Ben must sense it, because he gives her hand a squeeze. 

“Do you want me to call for a medic? They’ll probably give you some painkillers.” 

“I'm fine." 

“Bantha fodder. Stop trying to keep up the pretense, Rey, I know you’re in pain.”

_I feel it, too._

He calls for a medic, despite her protests. A tall woman with graying, sandy hair and freckles pushes through the curtain of reeds. She eyes Ben like he’s something vile, a venomous creature which may strike at any moment. Ben manages to keep his face passive, but he can tell it takes everything in his power to resist baring his teeth at her to keep up the reputation. 

“It’s rude to stare,” Rey snaps. 

“But, he’s _Kylo Ren_ ,” she stammers, looking at Rey like she’d sprouted another head. She shoves a little orange bottle of pills and a container of bacta salve into Rey’s hands and scurries the room. 

“They’re gonna start throwing around accusations about you. They're already calling you a traitor. I’ve heard talk.” The corner of his mouth twitches. “You need to hold your tongue. In a few months, you’re not gonna be able to hide your condition anymore, Rey. I—” 

“My _condition_?” she shrieks, eyes flashing. 

“You didn’t let me finish,” Ben says, tiredly. 

“My condition has nothing to do with this!" 

“It had everything to do with this, Rey. What will they think when they find out you’re carrying _my_ child?” He studies the floor. “The last thing I want is for them to turn against you because of me. I can handle a few stares, Rey.” He presses a kiss to the tip of her nose. “I’m used to people being afraid of me.” 

Rey feels something break a little inside her at his words. She seizes his hand. 

“I don’t care what they think,” she says, a bit more harshly than she intended. At least she gets her point across. “If _you_ won’t defend yourself, then _I_ will.” 

Ben quirks an eyebrow. If anything, he looks a little more in love. 

The guard stationed outside the door pulls back the curtain. He’s flanked by two others. They barge in, making toward the cot. Ben springs to his feet, planting himself firmly between Rey and the nerf-herders assailing their hut. One seizes Ben’s arms, twisting them behind his back. A dark-skinned guard unfastens a pair of binders of binders from his belt. 

“Oh, _hell!”_ Rey cries. “Get your kriffing hands _off_ him!” 

“He is to be taken back to his cell for interrogation,” the guard informs her. She thinks his name is Paxis. He flew for the Blue Squadron. Retired now, he’s working directly under Poe. 

Paxis shrugs. “General Dameron’s orders.” 

“Is that right?” Rey spits, little scarlet fires burning high in her cheeks. “You can tell Poe to shove a lightsaber up his—”

“Oh, come off it, Rey!” Ben yells.

“No!” she shouts, springing from the cot. She’d misjudged how her legs would hold up after more than a week of recovery. Her knees hit the wood floor of the hut before she really registers she’d fallen. Grunting with pain, she struggles to regain her balance. Her center of gravity is all wrong. Bright spots snap into focus and the world begins to spin. 

“Where’s Poe?” she yells. The third guard puts a hand on her shoulder, trying to help her to her feet. She plants a hand on his chest, fending off his advance. “Get your hands off me!” 

Ben wrests himself from his captor’s grip. The guards draw their blasters, barrels pointed at Ben’s head. He pays them no mind, crossing the room and bending down to scoop her up. One hand goes under her knees, and the other supports her back. He turns, facing the guards with Rey in his arms.

“Easy,” he warns. “You don’t want to do that.” 

“Oh, I don’t?” the stockier guard grunts, his ugly red face screwed up in a grimace. He flicks the safety. He’s talking to Ben but his piggy eyes are fixed on Rey. Taunting her. Daring her to make a move.

 _“Kriff off,”_ Rey yells, to the room at large, squirming in Ben’s arms.

“What d’you think’ll happen if I do?” 

“I think you’ll regret it,” Ben says, idly. 

“Put her down,” he growls. 

Ben deposits Rey on the cot without ceremony. 

“Now, step back,” the guard warns, brandishing his blaster. 

Ben doesn’t budge. 

“This is ridiculous,” Rey snaps. “Show me your credentials! You have no right—” 

“Rey—” Ben starts. 

“ _No!_ Let me speak to Poe!” 

“Quiet, _girl!”_ The gaurd hisses. And then makes a grave mistake: he points his blaster at Rey. 

Rey watches, her lips forming a scarlet “o” of horror, as Ben clenches his fist, and there’s a terrible crunch as every bone in his hand breaks. The man screams, clutching his hand to his chest. His blaster clatters to the ground. A blaster bolt rings through the air, smashing a whole in the side of the hut. Rey’s head whips around blindly, searching for the source of the shot. Raising her hand, she tugs the other guards' weapons from their hands before they get a chance to shoot. The tall guard is on the ground, weeping and clutching his broken hand. 

Ben closes the space between them in two, long-legged strides. 

“You alright?” He asks, taking her face in his hands, a deep frown pulling at the corners of his mouth as he checks her for injuries. 

_“Stop!”_

Poe bursts into the hut, blaster drawn. 

“Everyone, stop!” 

His gaze flits from Ben to Rey and back again. 

“What the hell happened?” 

“ _Interrogation_ , really?” Rey snaps. 

Poe’s shoulders slump. He lowers his blaster and sticks it in his belt, rubbing his temples. He looks exhausted, and older than his years. She swears there’s more lines in his face, a bit of gray in his hair. She’d be worried about him if she could find it in her to be anything but so goddamn _angry_. 

“It’s protocol, Rey. He’s a criminal and a prisoner of war. He’ll be confined, interrogated, and tried for his crimes.” 

Poe and Ben glare at each other. 

“The war is _over!”_ Rey cries. 

“Look. I’m not gonna argue with you about this. The fact that he’s been in here with you for forty _goddamn_ minutes and he’s already managed to injure someone is reason enough to put a bolt between his eyes. The trial is a formality. He should’ve been shot on sight.” Poe steps toward her. Ben shifts his weight, making to intervene, but Rey stills him with a hand on his arm. Poe stops, unwilling to draw nearer for fear of suffering the same fate as the guard still sniffling pathetically on the floor. 

When he speaks, his voice is strained.

“Trust me, Rey. I’m being generous.” 

“Oh, sod off—” 

“He’s right,” Ben interjects. He lays a hand on her shoulder. “It’s better if I follow protocol.” He touches her cheek. “Trust me, I’m better off behind bars.” 

“Ben, that’s not true—” 

He silences her with a look. 

_Do you trust me?_

“Ben—” 

“I’ll be fine, Rey,” he says, “I promise.” 

“But—” 

**_Do you trust me?_ **

Rey holds his gaze. All the fight drains from her. 

_I trust you._

He nods. She resigns herself to watch, helpless, as Ben lets them fasten binders around his wrists. They look a little white in the face to be getting within ten feet of him, but the small burst of satisfaction that gives does nothing to quell her revulsion at the idea of them strapping him to a chair for an interrogation. 

_Torture session,_ more like. She knows these people aren’t cruel, but this is Kylo Ren. He has no rights. Nothing is too unjust where monsters are concerned. In their eyes, heisn’t human. Poe said it, himself. Even the trial is a goddamn formality. He’s already been sentenced to death, as far as they’re concerned. 

She shudders. 

She tries to tell herself that he’s more than capable of protecting himself. That they’ll get what’s coming to them if they so much as lift a finger against him. He outmatches them ten to one in strength _and_ brains. Even without a weapon at his disposal, the Force is a sharp tool he wields with skill that surpasses that of some of the strongest Force users. 

But then something occurs to her. Something that chills her to the bone. He hadn’t lifted a finger to defend himself. It would be _just_ like him to sit there and take it. To play along and let them hurt him. If they cut him some kind of deal for her safety. He’d trade his life for her. Again. 

She can’t let that happen. 

She watches as Poe’s war dogs frog march the man she loves out the door, a sick feeling in her gut, like maybe even she can’t keep him safe against the New Republic’s hatred of Kylo Ren, even if he’d sworn off the persona. It didn’t matter to them. They’ll seize any excuse to mount his head on a spike. They won’t for one second even consider showing him mercy. Not when he’d had a hand in the deaths of their loved ones. Mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. It didn’t matter to them that he was a victim of abuse, that he’d been exploited since birth to kill for them. That he’d practically been bred like a pig for slaughter to be Palpatine’s marionette. They needed someone to blame and he’d arrived on their doorstep tied up in ribbon. No thanks to her. 

Rey pulls her knees to her chest. 

It’s just her and Poe now. She avoids his gaze, picking miserably at a loose thread in the bedsheet. She bites her lip, fighting off the tears threatening to spill from her lashes. It wouldn’t do her any good. Tears make her look weak. She is not weak. 

She can protect him from those guards. That was straightforward. That made sense. She didn’t think she could protect him from someone’s political agenda, and that scared her more than those guards ever could. More than look in Poe’s eyes—the look he’s giving her now, like he didn’t quite recognize her—ever could. 

“So, that’s it? You’re not talking?” 

Rey says nothing. 

“Look, Rey, whatever’s going on with all _this_ . . .” He gestures in her direction. “Just . . .”

He sighs, shaking his head,. 

“You gotta tell me what’s going on with you.” 

No response. Rey looks idly out the window, at the trees and mists, beyond. 

Poe raises his eyebrows, tongue in cheek. 

“Fine.” 

He sits beside her on the cot. 

“You want to play the silent game? I can play the silent game.” 

A few minutes past. Poe picks up the container of bacta salve on her bedside table and fiddles with it. She watches him out of the corner of her eye. He really knows how to get to her, and she hates it. They’re very much alike, though neither of them would ever admit it. 

“Where are we?” she asks stiffly, after the silence becomes unbearable. 

“Kashyyyk,” Poe says.

Rey nods. She goes back to looking out the window. 

Poe sighs loudly. 

“If you won’t talk, I will.” 

He sets the jar of bacta salve back on the bedside table with a loud thud. 

He looks at her. Rey looks out the window. 

“Finn tipped me off, before you left for the island. He knew you’d stop him if he told you. We were right behind you. When we arrived, Finn said he’d lost track of you. We searched everywhere. And then we saw Ren pull you out of that hole . . . “ 

He shakes his head, rubbing at the stubble on his chin. 

“ _Gods_ , there was so much blood . . . At first, I thought he’d done it. I thought you were dead.”

Poe sighs. 

“I tried to kill him, Rey,” he tells her. “I picked up my blaster. I aimed. I pulled the trigger, and then . . .” 

He falls silent. Rey throws a sideways glance in his direction. To her utter surprise and horror, his eyes are shining with tears.

“And then I saw Leia.” 

Rey meets his eyes. 

“She was just . . . there. And then she was gone.” His voice trembles.

“I saw her, Rey. She was standing right in front of me.” He sniffs, wiping his eyes. His voice is barely a whisper. 

“But that’s impossible.” He looks at her. “Right?”

“No.” Rey says, taking his hand. “Not impossible.” 

“We got you on the ship, stopped the bleeding. Ren refused to leave your side. I wanted to take him straight to Chandrila to answer for his crimes, but Finn convinced me otherwise, so we brought him here.” 

“Where’s here, exactly? It’s a small military installation along the River of Origin, part of defense program I’m setting up. The Wookiees are housing our military. They’re being very hospitable. They want a say in what happens next. They’ve known too much hardship in the past three hundred years. They’re not about to take a backseat.” 

“I see.” 

“We’re trying to keep Ren’s presence hushed up, for everyone’s peace of mind. If word reaches the council, he’. Hell, he’d be dead already. He’ll be safe here. Until he’s tried. Until he atones for his crimes.” 

Rey wrenches her hand from his grasp. 

_“Safe?”_ Rey snaps. “Are you kidding me? You’re still planning to execute him!” 

“It’s the law! He’s a war criminal. He is entitled to a fair trial, and the council will decide his fate. You’re acting like I _want_ to kill him. I don’t. It’s not personal.” 

She shakes her head, laughing coldly.

“You should learn to lie better.” 

“I don’t follow,” Poe says, with a glare. 

“Come _on_ , Poe! You hate him! Because of Leia. Because of the pain he caused her. Because _you_ could never replace him, even though you wanted to. She was like a mother to you, but she couldn’t return the sentiment, because whe she looks at you all she sees in the son she lost. You know it. I know it. He knows it.” 

Poe looks like he has half a mind to slap her. She doesn’t care. She’s shouting now. 

“He _has_ atoned for his crimes. He saved my life. More than once! Actually, I’ve lost count how many times I’d be cold in the ground if it weren’t for him. He has _died_ for his crimes, and I’ve spent the last three months trying to bring him back. You’re telling me you’re gonna turn around and execute him? Shoot him like a dog in the street? _Wake up,_ Poe. He _is_ Leia’s son, and sentencing him to death will hurt her far more than exacting revenge on her behalf. She never stopped loving him. All she wanted was for him to come home, and now he is home, and you want to murder him. He’s her legacy. If you’re going for the worst possible insult to her memory, _congratulations_ , ‘cause this is it!” 

Her chest heaves. She glares at him, fighting for breath as angry tears well in her eyes. 

“He tortured me! He’s killed hundreds of us! Our friends, Rey! What kind of message does that send when I let the most dangerous man in the galaxy run amok? What does that say to all the families, the mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters who have lost loved ones to the First Order’s brutality? What does that say to the people who’ve risked their lives for peace?” 

“It says we’re better than them! That we show mercy and forgiveness! That we don’t kill what we hate, we save what we love! Poe, don’t you see? Killing him would make you no better than Palpatine, or Pryde, or those bucketheads shooting civilians in the streets! Do you really want that on your conscience? The war is over. There’s people out there who are looking to you, waiting for what comes next. We need to give them _hope_ , not waste time around planning an execution for a man who’s ready to make amends.” 

Finn told me what’s been going on with you,” he interjects, almost accusingly. “What’s _really_ been going on with you. That you and Ren have a sort of, I dunno, a sort of _bond_. That he saved your life on Exegol. I didn’t understand. Hell, I still don’t understand.” 

“It’s not your business.” 

“It is absolutely my business.” 

Rey cocks an eyebrow

Poe snatches her hand, squeezing it hard enough to hurt. His voice lowers to an urgent whisper. 

“Rey, listen to me. Finn told me who the baby’s father is.” 

“He had no business telling you—” 

“Force, Rey! What does it matter?” 

“Generally, when you tell a friend a secret, you expect them to keep it, not go blabbing to the next person they meet!”

“It wasn’t like that!” 

Rey frowns. An uncomfortable, pregnant silence falls between them. 

“Why don’t you terminate?” Poe asks, after a while. 

Rey looks at him, incredulous.

_“What?”_

“If people find out, they’re gonna hate you just as much as they hate Ren! Do you really want your kid growing up knowing his father is that . . . that _monster?_ He’ll be walking around with a big neon sign over his head! He’ll never be able to escape that!” 

“Don’t tell me what’s best for my child,” Rey snaps.

“I just want what’s best for _you_ ,” Poe says. He runs a nervous hand through his hair. There's another, pregnant pause, at which point Rey studies the bottle of pills in her hand, determined to avoid his gaze. 

“Rey, I gotta know. Did he . . . did he _force_ himself on you?” 

“What? No!” Rey cries. “Poe, get your head out of your ass! He's not like that. Sure, we fought, but only because he was asking me to do leave the Resistance. We were on opposite sides of a war. e hasn't ever, not once, treated me like anything less than an equal. As hard as that is for you to understand. He is _human_. He’s made mistakes—” 

“Are you serious? I think that’s an _gross_ understatement—” 

“He has been brainwashed since birth! He has been manipulated by the dark side of the Force since he was in the womb, Poe!” 

“That doesn’t excuse what he’s done.” 

“Finn was taken from his family and raised to kill for the First Order. How is this any different?” 

“Finn was stolen as an infant! Ren turned to the darkside by choice!” 

“After his uncle tried to murder him!” 

“If my uncle tried to murder me, I still wouldn’t go run off to the dark side! I wouldn’t have given the order to destroy entire _worlds_ , or have you forgotten what became of the Hosnian system?” 

“Ben openly opposed Starkiller Base. You can’t blame him—” 

“He could’ve stopped it. Instead, he sat back and watched billions of people die.” 

“I can’t believe you,” Rey snaps. She looks out the window. “I’m done talking about this. Leave me alone.” 

“Come on, Rey. _Wake up!_ He’s using you!” 

“If all this is because you have feelings for me, or whatever, you can forget it.” 

“You’re acting like a child!” 

“Oh, _please!_ You don’t think I notice the way you look at me?” 

“I don’t have feelings for you, so don’t flatter yourself.” His cheeks redden. He folds his arms across his chest. “That’s not the point! The point is, you’re letting a heartless murderer bully you into serving him! He put a baby inside you and now he thinks he can turn you into some obedient wife. He thinks he owns you!” 

She slaps him, then. Hard. She immediately regrets it. Her hand flies to her mouth, eyes welling with tears. 

“Poe, I’m—” 

“Don’t.” He says, colorlessly. He stands, and makes toward the door. “Just don’t.” 

“Poe—” 

He pauses in the doorway, knuckles stark and bloodless as he grips the reedy curtain. He studies the floor. 

“I _did_ have feelings for you,” he says. “Or I thought I did. When Finn was with Rose. I told myself I liked you because that’s what everyone assumed would happen. I pursued you because we _worked_ , y’know? We fit. I was playing along. I liked you and I thought maybe you liked me, too, but I was lying to myself. It was obvious you were preoccupied, and I, well, I was falling in love with someone else.” 

Rey looks at him, at loss for words.

“Finn and I have been together since the war ended. Maybe if you weren’t so busy trying to be Luke Skywalker, you would’ve noticed.” He meets her eyes. “Maybe you don’t know me as well as you thought. And maybe I don’t know you.” 

And with that, he’s gone, leaving Rey to stare after him, numbed and queasy. She waits for the tears to come, replaying his parting words over and over in her head. They tear her apart. 

* * *

She takes one more pill than the recommended dosage and knocks out for a full eighteen hours. When she wakes, there’s a taste in her mouth like something died and a pounding ache in her temples. She stands and splashes cool water over her face, then ventures outside for the first time since her arrival.

The Wookiee villages are sequestered in the canopies of the sprawling wroshyr trees that cover Kashyyyk’s surface. Rey watches their fires burning against the dusky sky as the sun breaks over the horizon. A balmy breeze stirs the tendrils of hair falling out of her buns. 

She peers over the edge of the platform, at the dizzying drop that makes her stomach clench. 

She’s unsteady on her feet, still trying to get used to existence with a third of her right arm missing, which isn’t reassuring considering the entire village is sprawled among a network of wooden bridges without railings, and it’s a long journey down. A quarter mile down. A fall from this height would surely kill you. 

Rey leans heavily against the hut, drained and still foggy from the drugs. She watches the mists, the fires burning bright, the birds flitting between the branches in the canopy, above. 

Poe’s words grip her with taloned claws. His face is seared into the backs of her eyelids. He looked old. Too old. 

Did they all look like that? Had more lines appeared in her face? Was she graying and withered? Did she have that hunted, faraway look in her eye? Had the horrors of war finally taken their toll?

And that look of betrayal, of unrecognition . . . it haunts her. 

She’d lost him, and she’d probably lost Finn as well, she thinks miserably. As if that isn't bad enough, she's growing increasingly fearful for Ben’s life. A trial will be held, but it won’t be fair. They’ll execute him, and all of this will have been for nothing. He’s sitting in a cell somewhere. They’re probably hurting him, and he’s probably not doing anything to defend himself, and all she’s doing is making things worse for him

She reaches out, brushing against Ben’s mind, more to reassure herself, than anything else. He reaches out, and it feels like a linkage of fingers, but it’s brief. His presence fades, again, leaving her with a big open space where he should fill her up. He’s keeping things from her. He probably thinks he’s being noble, shielding her from what’s really going on in that cell, but the only thing he’s doing is making her angry. They’re supposed to be a team. He doesn’t have to handle this on his own, and she is _not_ fragile. 

_There’s something you’re not telling me,_ she says. 

He doesn’t reply. 

She chews on the soft inside of her cheek, feeling useless. 

It’s bad enough that he’s here. It must be so hard for him, surrounded by Leia’s familiars, in the place he vowed never to set foot again. How many dark and painful memories had already resurfaced in the time he’d spent here? She thinks of the way those guards had treated him. The way that medic had looked at him, like a feral beast which might attack at any moment. How many looks of revulsion had he suffered? How many insults had her _friends_ , her _comrades_ , spat behind his back? He’d returned for _her_ , and she’d let them throw him in a cell. 

She struggles to unravel the knot in her throat. 

_We’re getting out of here,_ she tells him. _Tonight._

 _Don’t do anything stupid_ , is his only reply. Fed up, she closes herself off from the bond, the mental equivalent of slamming the door in his face. 

Hot tears assault her eyes. She wipes them away angrily. The thoughts churning in her brain are enough to make her mouth go dry and her head spin, never mind the vertigo-inducing drop from the canopy. Rey clamps a hand to her mouth, knees hitting the wood as she crouches and vomits over the side of the platform. She heaves until there’s nothing left and sits back, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. 

She closes her eyes, pulling her knees up to her chest. She breathes hard through her nose, waiting for the nausea to subside. Something far below on the forest floor where light scarcely reaches gives a strange, mournful call. Rey strains her ears, wondering what kind of creature could make such a sound. It sounds lonely. 

“Morning sickness?” a voice asks, sympathetically. Rey opens her eyes. 

Rose balances a tray laden with food in her hands. She flashes Rey a soft smile. 

“I thought you might be hungry.” 

_“You know?”_ Rey yelps. 

“Of course I know,” Rose says, unimpressed. 

“Who told you?” 

“No one _told_ me anything,” Rose said, primly. “It’s obvious.” 

Rey groans. 

“That bad, huh?” 

“No,” Rose says reassuringly. “I’m just good about noticing when people are acting different or strange. Considering you’ve been moody, reckless and generally insufferable lately, I put two and two together.” 

“Oh,” is all Rey manages. 

“Plus, you look like you’ve upped a cup size.” 

Rey folds her arms across her chest self-consciously, frowning. Rose grins. 

“I’m observant.” 

“That’s one word for it,” Rey deadpans. “Tell me, what else is so starkly obvious that people feel like they need to treat me like I’m fragile and prone to breakage?” 

“For starters, you seem to be missing a hand.” 

Rey rolls her eyes. 

“Anything else?” 

“No, I think that covers it.” Rose brandishes the tray. “Breakfast?” 

They eat in silence. Well, Rey eats in silence. Rose chatters away, filling her in on everything she’s missed the past few months while Rey attacks her scrambled eggs, struggling to handle a fork in her left hand. Rose is operating under Poe now, heading a program that’s working to establish laws that prohibit forced labor throughout the galaxy. 

“I’m going to pretend that I wasn’t hurt you didn’t tell me you were pregnant in the first place, considering I’m your best friend and that’s the kind of earth-shattering secret friends tell each other.” 

“Sorry, Rose,” Rey sighs. “I guess I just had a lot on my mind.” 

“I forgive you,” Rose says. “Now that that’s out of the way, there are more pressing matters.” She seizes Rey’s elbow, causing Rey to spill caf all down her front. 

“Kriffing hell, Rose,” Rey yells.

“Sorry,” she says, sheepishly, dabbing at Rey’s shirt with a napkin. 

“In all seriousness, there are rumors going around that you eloped with _Kylo Ren_.” Rose’s eyes are huge, reproachful. “Do you confirm or deny?” 

“I didn’t _elope_ with him,” Rey says, shifting her weight. She jabs at her polystarch with her fork. “Look, Rose, I think I need to clear the air.” Rey takes a breath, trying to gather her bearings before it all comes pouring out in a rush. Things she couldn’t tell Poe, because he wouldn’t understand. Things she couldn’t really admit to herself. 

“Ben defected from the First Order. During the battle on Exegol, he saved my life. He’s on the right path, now. I realize he’s committed some terrible atrocities, but who hasn’t? _Force_ , we were fighting a war! He’s not the monster everyone makes him out to be, okay? Everyone thinks I’m crazy. I just . . .I don’t see why it’s such a crime to give someone a second chance, you know? Poe says he’s using me. He’s not, and I . . . It’s . . . we’re . . . ugh, it’s complicated,” Rey finishes, none too articulately. She looks at Rose, trying to make her understand. 

“I believe you,”

“Look, it’s . . . _what?_ ” 

“I believe you. Love is complicated. If you care for him, that’s a good enough reason for me.” 

“I never said I love—” 

Rose shoots her a look. 

“Fine,” Rey snaps, exasperated. She watches Rose skewer a strange, orange fruit with appendages protruding from its center that could only be called tentacles. 

“You believe me? For real?” 

“For real. You’re my friend. I trust your judgement.” 

Rey blinks, gaping at her. Rose cocks an eyebrow. 

Rey begins to laugh. It’s quiet at first, but it grows, until it shakes her whole body and makes her belly ache. It’s a contagious kind of laugh, and soon enough they’re both in stitches on the floor, wheezing, clutching their sides. Rey wipes the tears from her eyes, still giggling absurdly. 

It’s exactly the thing she needed to hear after everyone else had treated her like she belonged in the loony bin for trusting someone like _Kylo Ren_ (the horror!). It takes a considerable weight off her chest. 

“You’re strange, wizard,” Rose remarks, gathering her composure, and Rey grins at the old nickname, which Rose had given to her about two minutes and forty-seconds after they’d been formally introduced. “I like spending time with you. Everyone around here’s got a stick so far up their ass, they’re shitting splinters. You’re a breath of fresh air.” 

“I like spending time with you, too,” Rey says, and she’s a little surprised to find she means it. Rose smiles. 

“Oh! I almost forgot, I brought these.” The technician reaches deep inside her pockets and withdraws three items: Rey’s lightsaber, Kiran’s kyber crystals, and the tauntaun figurine. 

“Those were the only items you had on you. Your old clothes were so torn up they thought it would be better just to incinerate them. I recovered these.” 

“Thank you,” Rey breathes. She fastens the kyber crystals around her neck and returns the saber to her belt, relieved at its familiar weight against her hip. She picks up the tauntaun, running her thumb along the grain of the wood. 

Rose rests her chin in her hands and leans forward, expectantly. 

“So, tell me about your dark prince.” 

Rey grins. 

* * *

Rey scrubs the dirt from under her fingernails and splashes water over her face. She’s late for a cybernetics appointment to get fitted for a new hand. Poe had taken the liberty to shuttle in the best cybernetics specialist in this system for her, no thanks there. She rolls her eyes at her reflection. More and more he’s been acting like a stern parent looking after a teenager than her friend and confidant. 

She takes a brush to the greasy, singed rat’s nest on her head. It’s a few shades darker than its natural color, congealed with blood and starting to smell. She does the best she can to tame it, and though it’s still tangled in the back and lopsided where the explosion burned large hunks of it away, at least it’s manageable. She stuffs it in its usual bun and hauls ass to the med bay. 

She keeps a lookout for Poe, avoiding him at all costs. She’s not ready to face him, yet, so she keeps her head down. It takes her a bit longer than she would’ve preferred to navigate the mess of swaying bridges, narrow pathways, and clunky lifts that connect the various settlements throughout the village. 

She passes some people she knows, some she vaguely recognizes, and some she doesn’t. A few Wookiees bow their heads in friendly greeting, but Chewie is not among them. She bows, too. Her shyriiwook is a little rusty, but she makes do. 

She’s sweating by the time she reaches the medbay, and the tepid air doesn’t help her case. Her newly-tamed hair has returned to its former, frizzed mess. She runs her fingers through it distractedly as she steps over the threshold. 

A service droid greets her, instructing her to have a seat. She does, drumming an irregular beat on her knee as she waits for her name to be called. 

A med droid shuffles through the door and tells her they’re ready for her. She follows it to the back room, where it instructs her to sit on the examination table. It checks her blood pressure, breathing sounds, and shines a light in her eyes before hooking her up to a machine that’s supposed to check the baby’s vitals. 

She watches the hills and valleys of the baby’s heart rate on the monitor. 

“I’ve been granted access to all your files, downloaded from your last medical visit. It looks like you’re nearly fourteen weeks along in your pregnancy,” the droids chirps. “Congratulations, you've made it through the first trimester. According to my data, you should be experiencing a decrease in nausea and fatigue. You should start to show more physical signs of pregnancy, and you may begin to feel the baby move, though most first-time mothers don’t expect to feel movement until the end of the second trimester, around twenty to twenty-five weeks.” 

“I am transferring some additional information, so you can access it later. It should answer any questions you may have.” 

The med droid switches on a second monitor. 

“Would you like to see the baby?” 

“Er—” Rey says. 

_Ben should be here._

She looks at the med-droid and gives a small nod. 

It instructs her to lie down. Using a probe, the droid uses ultrasound imagery to get a visual on her developing baby. It adjusts the monitor so Rey can get a better look. Rey gazes at the grainy image of the fetus. Her breath catches.

It’s no bigger than a lemon, but she can see the domed shape of a head, even tiny feet. Tears spring in her eyes and she wipes them away. It’s one thing to feel all the anxieties and exhaustion of pregnancy. It’s another to see photo-evidence, and another, entirely, to meet your grown son from an alternate timeline. 

She can’t think about that. It just gives her a headache. Nevertheless, her fingers brush the kyber around her neck and hold fast. 

When the med-droid is finished with the sonogram, he updates her personal file, and then leaves to retrieve a few model hands to fit her with a cybernetic prosthesis. 

While she waits, Rey lays a hand over the gentle bump where their baby grows. She’d begun to develop a definitive curve over the past week or so. She’s still managing to hide it fairly easily under loose clothing, but in a few short months that’ll no longer be the case. She thinks of the sonogram on the monitor, of Kiran’s faraway eyes, of Ben, stuck in a cell Force knows where. It’s almost too much. 

Before she has time to wallow in self-pity, the med droid returns, flanked by the cybernetics specialist, who graciously wrings her hand and introduced himself as Tennai Blak.

"Call me Ten," he insists. He opens a case full of model hands for her to choose from and runs through a detailed overview of each one. The selection is overwhelming; there are prostheses in an array of shapes, materials, and colors. Some have synthetic skin. Some are weaponized with blades, blasters or stun guns, an array of other gadgets. All of it in excess—she doesn’t need some high-tech arsenal attached to her arm. She just needs a hand. 

Rey selects the basest model of the bunch, sleek and silver, light enough that it won’t slow her down or throw off her balance, strong enough to withstand hard combat, elegant enough to handle more precise, specific movements with grace. Ten praises her on an excellent choice and moves to take her measurements. After she transfers the credits, med droid 2MED7 shoos her away while they construct her prosthetic and promises to send for her when it’s ready. She doesn’t need telling twice. A wave of relief breaks over her head as she steps into sunlight, glad to be free of the medbay, where the strong smell of antiseptic was making her queasy. 

She considers seeking out Finn, and makes to find his quarters, but she ends up wandering aimlessly through the village. No one bothers her, though the few stares she does get aren’t even subtle. She ignores them, keeping her eyes on the ground as she wanders. She picks her way across winding platforms and narrow bridges that span the monstrous, sprawling wroshyr trees, some of them more than a hundred feet in diameter. 

Her feet carry her through the village without any direction on her part. She takes a lift to a lower level of the village. A bright, yolk-yellow bird soars above her head, its impressive wingspan revealing patches of red and purple. She watches it dive between the branches. 

She takes another lift down to the forest floor. It’s so dark down here, where the foliage blocks out the sunlight. The raucous sounds of activity from the village die away. She’s never ventured this far down, but she knows the forest floor has its fair share of dangers. 

_“Why do you think the wookies stay in the canopy? It’s safer in the trees.”_

Rose had told her horror stories of giant arachnids and other strange creatures which lived in the heart of the forest. Kashyyyk, home to an array of flora and fauna, is infamous for its insects: giant, and usually venomous, Rey keeps a watchful eye for anything with pincers. The soil is spongy under her feet, which works to her advantage to buffer the noise her footsteps make. 

Even in the shade, the air’s a bit sultry and wet. Rey's clothes stick to her. She wades through beds of moss and strange, colorful fungi. The thick trunks of the wroshyr trees stretch dizzyingly above her head. They seem to go on for miles. 

She walks for a long time. It’ll do her good to work some feeling into her muscles and get her strength back. There’s still a dull ache where her hand should be, but her walkabout through the forest effectively distracts from it, with the added effect that it finally clears the last of morphine haze from her mind and allows her to gather her thoughts. Good. She doesn’t care for the foggy feeling, and it’s time she starts devising a plan that’s going to get her and Ben out of here. Preferably before the firing squad blows his head off. After that, who knows? 

It’s the first time in Rey’s life she doesn’t have a war to wage. What happens next is anyone’s guess.

It’s an odd feeling, but an exhilarating one, and now that Ben’s at her side and her family is whole again, she doesn’t have a geostorm where her vital organs should be, threatening to swallow her and tear her apart. They’ve made it this far. They’ll be alright. 

She believes it like she believes Kashyyyk is covered in trees. 

She imagines they’ll set out for the unknown regions. Maybe she’ll finally get to see a bit more of the galaxy’s green. Maybe they’ll pick up where she left off, recovering the old temples, training a new generation. 

Will Ben even want that? They hadn’t exactly had the time to discuss their retirement plan, and the last time they disagreed about what the future held for them, the legacy saber split and half and she’d left him unconscious in a throne room quickly going up in flames. 

All the ruin they’d brought on each other, and the salvation they’d found in each other . . . it has to have been for something. 

_Let the past die,_ he’d told her. _Kill it, if you have to. That’s the only way to become who you were meant to be._

Who _was_ she meant to be, exactly? That had never really been quite clear. 

She has a legacy to uphold. Where did Ben fall in that equation? Legacies could be kept alive and it didn’t mean they shouldn’t change. She’s heard of Gray Jedi, Force wielders toeing the line between the light and dark side of the Force. Maybe answers lay in the ways of the ones devoted to neither side. 

_There is no light without the dark._

Maybe they could be gray together. 

She already has plans to split with the Resistance. Her work is done here. The First Order is gone. They are no longer movable parts in a bigger machine. Maybe that makes all the difference. 

They’ll figure it out. They have to. The only thing she’s truly certain of is that she doesn’t belong anywhere else but at Ben’s side, and he belonged at hers. Everything else would fall into place around them. Or it would burn.

Rey glances back the way she had some. She’s ventured far. Far enough it gives her a pause as she tries to calculate exactly how far she’d come, and how long it would take to retrace her steps. The sun is still high in the sky. She does not want to be stuck down here come nightfall, when the people manning the lift operatics turn in for the night. By her estimate, she still has four or five hours until sundown. Good. 

She ventures a little further, dreading returning to camp for fear of bumping into Poe. Or Finn, for that matter. Force knew Poe had already told him about the row they’d had, and she wasn’t too eager to find out what he had to say on the subject. So she walks, kicking pebbles as she does so, keeping her senses tuned to the little movements of creatures in the underbrush and among the lower branches. 

She happens upon a small, nondescript building between two of the larger trees. It’s only one story, but it’s duracrete exterior stands out against the earthy shadows, a stark contrast from the wooden infrastructure the wookiees preferred. It’s guarded by an armed soldier in dirt and sweat-streaked pants and vest. He’s smoking a cigarra, rolling it absently between his fingers. He looks young, classically handsome, with a piercing gaze and dark ,close-cropped hair. He thumbs the safety on his blaster absently as she approaches, but doesn’t make a move to aim at her. 

“Rey?” he asks, casually. She cocks an eyebrow, a little taken aback by the sound of her name on a stranger's lips before she realizes that a lot of people probably know who she is. She’d become something of a celebrity around their old base. The Jedi. The _legend_. 

She hears Luke’s derision echo in her head as clearly as if he were standing next to her, spouting self-deprecating bantha shit to the heavens. 

As much as the attention irked her before, and made it nearly impossible to have a proper mental breakdown (she had a lot of those in the aftermath of the battle on Exegol, and in the year before, as she battle a rising tide of conflicting feelings regarding Kylo Ren, and there’d always been wary stares following her if she happened to let her emotions slip through the cracks in her mask), she _really_ despises it now. Gossip travels fast on small military installations like these. She can’t put a toe out of line without everyone within a thirty-mile radius hearing about it by this time tomorrow. 

Rey greets him, trying to match his nonchalance. He offers her a cigarra. She declines. It’s hard to miss the unease in his eyes, like he expects her to start throwing punches. His eyes move a little too fast. His shoulders are a little too tense. His fingers are a little too close to the trigger. She holds her ground, matching his gaze. 

“What’s in there?” she asks, trying to put on an air of girlish innocence. 

“I’m afraid that’s classified information,” he says, not unkindly. 

Rey draws herself up to her full height, which, if we’re being honest wasn’t saying a whole lot compared to the guard's six feet of chiseled muscle. He _is_ quite handsome. His eyes were striking gold, unlike any color she’d ever seen. Rey has a sudden thought that he may not be entirely human. 

“I demand access to this building.” 

“I can’t do that,” he says. “It’s against orders.” 

“Whose orders?” 

“General Dameron.” 

“What a bunch of bantha poodoo,” she swears, under her breath. 

“Pardon?” 

She puts on a smile, letting out a little, coquettish laugh that makes her cringe inwardly. 

“Oh, forgive me, I 'm afraid we've had a bit of a misunderstanding," she says, passing a hand across his face, imbuing her will into him. _"You will tell me what’s behind that door.”_

His pupils are blown wide. His eyes slide out of focus. The grip on his gun goes slack. He looks a little like he’d forgotten what he was doing here. 

“Of course,” he says, as if it was his intention to reveal the information all along. “This is Detention Block K-1. Inside, you'll find a cell occupied by the former Supreme Leader of the First Order, Kylo Ren. I'm under orders to restrict all unauthorized entry to this facility until General Dameron is ready to interrogate him.” 

Rey nods, not at all surprised. So this is where they’re keeping him. Confined to some scrappy building in the middle of the forest, probably with Force-resistant technology. 

“You will grant me access,” Rey says. 

“You are cleared for access.” 

He types in a clearance code and steps aside. The doors open with a hydraulic hiss. 

“Thanks,” Rey says, stepping over the threshold. “Take the rest of the day off.”

"I'll take the rest of the day off," he repeats pleasantly. 

She watches him wander off, then slips through the door and down the hall. 

It’s white tile from floor to ceiling. Too bright. Too clean, lined with cells only eight square feet, equipped with a cot, a sink and toilet. All of them are empty. All except one. 

“Ben!” she gasps, peering through the barred window to his cell. She yelps, springing back as a mild, electric current flow jolts her fingers. 

“Careful,” he mutters, groggily, rising from the cot. The sheer _mountain_ of a man before her still manages to take her breath away. He looks at her, and some of the tight pallor in his face melts away. His eyes soften. 

“What’re you doing here?” 

“Er, this is awkward, but I’m actually here visiting a _different_ highly dangerous war criminal,” she says, with a smile. "Have you seen him? He's kind of a dork. He does calligraphy in his free time." He smirks, and his eyes (there’s no other way to describe them) are smoldering. It does something to her. Something low in her belly comes awake. 

“Oh? Is that right? Well, I was expecting a _different_ amputee desert rat. Have you seen her? She’s kinda short. She doesn't know how to use a fork.” 

“Kriff off, Benjamin!” Rey yells, but she’s grinning. She sticks her hand through the bars. He takes it, rubbing her knuckles absently with the pad of his thumb.

“How’d you weasel yourself in here?” 

“It’s a secret.” 

“They’ve got around the clock security monitoring, you know. Cameras, wires, the whole works.” 

“I figured.” 

“Dameron’s going to have a hissy fit when he finds you in here." 

“I don’t care.” 

“Have I mentioned that I adore you?” he asks, tilting his head. 

“More than once.” 

She smiles, but it's gone in an instant. Rey sighs, rubbing at the beginnings of a migraine. 

“How are we going to get out of here?” 

“I’m not worried about that. Getting out of this cell is child’s play. I would’ve done it already if I thought it would help us at all. It won’t. If we make a run for it they’ll come after us. They’ll always hate you for it. They already hate me, and I couldn't give a hutt’s left testicle what they think of me, but you have people here, Rey. Real connection. You can’t throw that away. I don’t want you to have to live like a fugitive, always looking over your shoulder.” 

“I would, if I had to. I’d leave with you right now if you asked me to.” 

“I know. That’s the problem.” He’s got that look in his eyes, like he’s not really there. Like he’s inside himself. “I think we just have to wait this one out.” 

“This is my fault.” 

“I beg you, _please_ explain the mental gymnastics you had to have gone through to reach that conclusion,” he says, eyes darkening. “We could’ve done a lot worse. We’re both alive, aren’t we?” 

“That won’t last. If they call the firing squad—” 

“I won’t let that happen.” 

He looks at her, a frown pulling at his lips. 

“You should go. They already don’t trust you. What happens when someone who’s not Dameron catches you in here, fraternizing with the enemy? 

“Who said anything about fraternizing?” she asks, a smile twitching on her lips. 

“I’m serious.” 

“Poe’s still overseeing operations here. He’s the one running the show. He’s the one we need to worry about.” 

Ben shakes his head. 

“He’s got a soft spot for you. He’ll do anything you want if you ask nicely enough, but he’s just one man. There’ll be a council of representatives from the Core Worlds. Poe’s rank isn’t even high enough to put him on that council, let alone single handedly decide what happens to me. Someone with other intentions is going to see you with me. They’ll think you’re _conspiring,”_ he’s frowning, but there’s flicker of amusement there, and she knows he’s indulging that little fantasy of his. Nothing’s really changed, then. He’d have her dressed all in black, straddling his lap on the dark throne. She smiles. Right now, it doesn’t seem so bad. 

“They’ll throw you behind bars, too.”

“They wouldn’t do that.” 

“They might. Fear makes people do ugly things. They’re afraid of what they don’t understand. They’re afraid of me, and justifiably so. They’re afraid I’ll turn you against them. They’re afraid of what I might do to you, their precious little Jedi. Their ray of light. 2187, Dameron, all of them.” His voice is low and velvety. Rich like chocolate, like darkness. Like rain. 

“These small men think they need you.” He presses his lips to her inner wrist, and when he pulls away, there's something ancient in his eyes. A hunger. Something that screams **_mine._** “Not as much as I do.”

“What will you do, now that you have me?” she asks, with a dangerous smile. Ben smirks. 

“I’ll make you a queen.” 


	35. The Dyad

She agrees to accompany Rose at dinner. They find a spot near one of the smaller fires, tucking into a hefty meal of some kind of bird meat on skewers. 

She spots Poe across the way, sharing a beer or two with some of his old comrades. She avoids his gaze, keeping her eyes on the tray balanced on her lap. 

She raises the skewer to her mouth. It’s challenging; Ten had called her back to the med bay to fit her with her brand-new cybernetic hand, and the hunk of metal is awkward, cold against her skin. She grimaces, strongly suspecting that if she’d simply duct taped a fork to the ragged stump where her right hand should be, it wouldn’t make much of a difference.

_ You’ll get used to it _ , Ten had assured her, bouncing jovially on the balls of his feet.  _ In a few days, you won’t know the difference.  _ He’d talked her ear off for more than an hour, pointing out all of the features he’d equipped it with. She didn’t trust the friendly disposition he put on, the smile that didn’t reach his eyes. 

She’d seen it before, time and time again. There had been no shortage of overeager swindlers trying to con her into paying double the portions for something barely worth a bucket of rusted bolts. She’d learned quickly how to recognize a fraud from a mile away. It wasn’t long before the tradesmen selling their wares at the outpost learned to steer clear of her. Too many of them knew the business end of her staff more intimately than they would’ve liked. She’d built up a strange mutual respect with the people trying to scrape a living out of that shithole. Like her, they were just trying to survive. By whatever means necessary. 

In another life, she would’ve broken his fingers for trying to pull a fast one, but she tempered that desire quickly, lest it brought even more trouble down on her head. Force knew that was the last thing she needed. 

It had been a hefty expense. If she were still on Jakku, she would’ve spent the remainder of her days with one hand. Prosthetics weren’t cheap, and the few you  _ could  _ find on the black market were nothing more than a few rusted parts held together with stripped screws, spit and adhesive tape. Horrible, clunky things that exposed you to tetanus and a host of other infections, and  _ those  _ sold for more portions than she could earn if she spent three lifetimes scavenging for scraps. 

Rey has to remind herself, for the millionth time, that money is no longer an object. She’d dipped into the Organa vaults to cover the cost. She knew Leia would want her to, but it didn’t make her feel any less dirty. 

She had a small bit of savings under her name from the earnings the Resistance had allotted her. Rebellions didn’t exactly pay well. Their salaries depended on rank, and seeing as Rey never really  _ had  _ an official rank, as the token Jedi and Leia’s apprentice and close confidant, her salary fell somewhere in the range of commander. That income was no small thing, especially to Rey, who’d spent nineteen years living off portion bread, with no real credits to her name. Despite her resources, she just couldn’t dish out the credits to afford something this elegant. 

And it  _ was  _ elegant. 

She flexes her fingers, experimentally. She listens to the click and whir of its tiny mechanisms as she wiggles her pinky finger, watching the firelight reflect off the elegant, silver exterior. It’s going to take some getting used to, but it’s better than nothing. Once she makes it back to the peace and quiet of her quarters, she’ll tinker with it. It couldn’t hurt to make a few tweaks. 

That’s exactly what she needs right now. A bit of quiet, a bit of time working with her fingers, reading the economy of movement. A bit of space to breath and to be alone with her thoughts. So she can plan. So she can hear herself  _ think _ , for fuck’s sake. 

She bites off another mouthful of dark meat. Grease drips down her chin. 

“You’re a very messy eater,” Rose remarks. 

“I’ve heard,” Rey quips, making no effort to be tidier as she starts in on a second helping. She’s  _ starving. _

“Here.” Rose dabs at her blouse with a napkin. 

“Thanks,” she says, taking the napkin and wiping her mouth. 

She can feel eyes on her. The back of her neck prickles; she throws a wary glance around the village. People are staring. They talk, they whisper things behind their back. 

_ Mole. Conspirator. Sympathizer. Traitor. _

Rey holds their gaze, daring them to say something. Their eyes flit away when they notice her watching them. 

These people were her friends, once. Maybe they were even family, in some sense. She knows better than anyone that family doesn’t just mean blood. Family means the ones who stand beside you, who fight with you, and sometimes for you, but never against you. Family didn’t turn its back on you when you need it most. 

It’s appalling how quickly they’d turned on her. They’re afraid. She understands, too. She knows how it looks from the outside. Somehow, that makes it worse. When she puts herself in their shoes, it’s hard for her to imagine she’d act any different. 

She wishes Finn were here. She hasn’t spoken to him since she arrived. She’s been itching to talk to him, despite what she already knows he’s going to say—everything she doesn’t want to hear. He hates Ben just as much as Poe does, and he has every reason to. He’d been at Tuanal the night the First Order attacked. He’d been taken from his family and brainwashed into obedience. He always knew the right thing to say. 

Gods, how she’d treated him like a pile of space junk, the past few months. She hopes he can forgive her, even if she doesn’t deserve it. Even if he should’ve walked away a long time ago. To hell with her. To hell with it all. 

Her chest is tight, like she can’t take proper breaths. Her hand trembles. She drops her skewer in defeat, wiping her greasy fingers on her thighs. She stands up, balancing her tray in her left hand. 

“Rey?” Rose asks. “You okay?” 

“Huh? Uh, yeah, I just . . . I’m sorry,” she mutters, voice cracking, and then she’s fleeing the fireside, leaving Rose to stare after her. 

* * *

She winds up in the clearing outside Detention Block K-1. She doesn’t know how she got there. One minute she’s hauling ass from the village, desperate to get away from all those  _ eyes _ on her, and the next she’s slinking through the shadows, letting her feet carry her to the only place she knows she’s safe from dark looks and darker whispers. 

She can’t still the tremors in her hands. 

There are two guards standing outside. They must’ve caught her little stunt on the surveillance footage, earlier. There’s no other sound reason why Poe would up the security. She rolls her eyes. He’s deluded if he thinks two trigger-happy idiots will have a better chance of stopping her than one. 

A grave-looking woman with long, salt and pepper hair tied in a knot on the top of her hand stands by the doors. She’s in her late forties, if Rey had to guess, and the high-caliber blaster clutched in her hands is as sleek and severe as its bearer. The other, she realizes, with a sinking dread, is the piggy-eyed guard whose hand Ben had broken.

Rey’s careful to make a lot of noise as she nears the clearing. Something tells her it’s in her best interest not to sneak up on them for fear of taking a stun bolt straight to the chest. They start at the slightest noise, their shoulders level with their ears, ready to loose a round of bullets on anything that moves. She doesn’t blame them. Spending prolonged hours down here in the dark is enough to put anyone on edge. 

“Evening,” she greets, calmly enough. The woman’s mouth forms a thin line. Her fingers shift imperceptibly on the trigger, but she doesn’t raise her weapon. The piggy-eyed guard, on the other hand, brandishes his blaster at her. 

“Freeze!” he barks. “You aren’t allowed to be here, girl. General Dameron’s orders.” 

Rey holds up her tray. 

“I came to take my meal with the prisoner. I’m allowed to do that, aren’t I? 

“I’m afraid not,” the woman says, shouldering her blaster. She’s all business. “You aren’t authorized.” 

“Look, I’m not gonna try anything. I promise. Cuff me, if you want to. I just want to see him.” She takes a deep breath, hating the way her voice trembles. “Please, just let me see him.” 

“You’re full of shit. You don’t think we know about your little escapade? You better turn around now, or we start shooting. Dameron’s orders.” The pig-eyed guard flicks off the safety on his blaster. 

“Stand down, Torbond,” the woman warns. Torbond opens his mouth to argue, but she silences him with a glare. 

She levels Rey with an icy stare. 

“He’s right. I’m going to have to ask you to vacate the premises. For your sake, I suggest you obey, or we will be forced to arrest you.” 

Blood rushes in Rey’s ears. She grits her teeth, eyes flicking between them, puzzling out her best course of action. 

“Let her in.” 

Rey turns on her heel to find Finn at the edge of the clearing, jaw set, arms folded across his chest. A wave of relief washes over her. 

“General Dameron—”

“—as co-General, I order you to step aside,” Finn says firmly. 

Torbond sputters an objection, but his comrade, Greer, is already moving aside, holstering her blaster. He’s glaring at Finn like he’d like nothing more than to punch him in the nose, but he thinks better of it. Cursing, he sidles aside. He doesn’t drop his weapon. 

Rey throws her arms around Finn. He pulls her against him, hugging her tightly. 

“Hey,” he breathes, and it’s hard to miss the tremor in his voice. He pulls away, looking her up and down. “How’re you feeling?” 

His eyes linger on her cybernetic hand a second too long, and there’s pain in his face like she’s never seen. It threatens a wave of tears she’s wholly unprepared for. She bites them back, damning the hormones, damning him, how much she owes him, how easy it is to love him. 

“Better. They’ve got me on all these pain-killers, so I’ve got some pretty big holes in my memory and I really couldn’t tell you what I ate for breakfast this morning, but I’ll be fine.” 

“ _ Force, _ ” he mutters. He touches his shoulder, a little distractedly, as if reassuring himself that she’s really there.

“It’s okay,” she assures him, squeezing his hand. “It’s over. I killed her.” Rey throws a wary glance over her shoulder. “Look, let’s talk somewhere else. Somewhere private.” 

Finn nods, swallowing hard. 

“It can wait,” he says, the corner of his mouth twitching. “He’s waiting for you.” 

Rey nods, giving his shoulder a parting squeeze. Torbond accompanies her, his blaster still trained on her back. She has half a mind to break his other hand, but resists the temptation. 

Ben’s awake, perched on the edge of the bed with his own plate of food balanced on his knees. He chews stiffly, mechanically, like he doesn’t particularly enjoy the act of eating in general. When he catches sight of Rey, his eyes brighten, just a little, before he sees Torbond and his expression turns sour. 

“Hey,” Rey says, trying to act like this is the most normal thing in the world. “Mind if I join you for dinner?” 

Ben’s regards Torbond with suspicion, hackles raised.

“I’m not allowed in here unless I’m supervised by an authorized official,” Rey explains. 

Ben glares at Torbund.

“Fine,” he growls. He turns to Rey, and the sharp edges fall away. He only has eyes for Rey. His gaze drops to the cybernetics poking out of her sleeve, and shadows cloud his eyes. 

“What do you think?” she says, airily, as if she were showing off a new manicure, rather than a prosthetic. She tries to make it seem like the most natural thing, like  _ no biggie _ , like she doesn’t feel splinters in her chest every time she thinks about the piece that’s missing.  _ Battle wounds _ , she insists, trying to soothe the wave of guilt that washes over him.  _ It’s an occupational hazard _ . Guilt, because he’d failed, because even  _ he  _ hadn’t been enough to keep her whole. It slips through his defenses, unbidden, though he tries to hide it. 

_ It’s not your fault _ , she wants to say.  _ How could it be? You were dead. Dead because of me.  _ She holds her tongue, because that would just make things worse for him. 

_ It could’ve been worse.  _

“It’s beautiful,” Ben says, approaching the bars. He reaches for her, and she sidles up to entangle their fingers . . . 

“Step back!” Torbond barks, brandishing his blaster. Ben freezes, firsts clenched at his sides. 

“For fuck’s sake,” Rey says, “he’s behind bars!” 

“Quiet,  _ girl _ ,” he snaps. He keeps his blaster trained on Ben, face devoid of color. For the first time, Rey glimpses his purplish, swollen fingers. 

“Back away from the door.” 

Ben obeys, shooting her a look. 

_ It’ll only make things worse.  _

She heaves a sigh and crosses the room to retrieve a chair, not caring that Torbond’s blaster is surely pointing at her. She hauls the chair across the room and sets it outside Ben’s cell. She sits, turning her attention back to her meal. Ben settles himself on the floor in a long-legged sprawl, leaning against the wall. 

She hates that it has to be this way, at least she gets to see his face. They eat in silence. Ben keeps throwing wary glances in Torbund’s direction. The guard's looking a little peaky. Sweat drips down his forehead. His knuckles are white against the blaster he clutches to his chest. She imagines he’d have the same look about him if he were dangling above a Sarlacc pit. She grinned, entertaining herself with all sorts of fantasies that featured Torbond facing off a particularly dangerous animal. It all struck her as a ridiculous formality, and extremely funny, considering Ben could snap his neck with a twitch of his fingers if the mood struck him. He should be pissing himself. 

Rey meets his eyes, and he shoots her look that seems more like a plea for permission to introduce Torbond’s face to the nearest console. She jerks her chin. If he could go twenty-four hours without killing anyone, if she could hold her tongue, if she could sway the council by playing up his relation to Leia, if they made it through the trial, then maybe  _ maybe  _ they might just make it off this kriffing planet. 

Rey glances at Ben’s tray and the meager rations he’s pushing around with his fork. Polystarch, a protein cube that’s probably expired, and an identifiable  _ something  _ that she could only describe as mush. Rey looks at her plate, feeling her throat tighten. Fresh meat, fruit, bread. Not portion bread, either, but real, actual bread. 

“That’s what they’re feeding you?” she cries. She glares at Torbund. “This is ridiculous. “Get him some real food!” 

Torbond makes no move. He leers at her. 

“Based on his height, weight, and nutritional needs, his rations are sufficient—” 

“Bantha shit! You’re starving him!”” 

“Rey—” Ben starts. Rey leaps to her feet, cursing. She reaches through the bars, dumping the remainder of her meal onto Ben’s plate. 

“You need it more than I do,” he objects, and there’s an added weight to his words. Oh, right. The baby. 

“I’m not gonna let you starve,” she fires back, folding her arms across her chest. 

Ben frowns. He slides his plate beneath the bars. 

“Eat.” It’s a command. She wants to remind him she is not one of his First Order puppets he can order around. 

“I’m not hungry.” 

“Rey.” 

“Shut up.” She’s overreacting. She’s very aware how ridiculous this is, but she can’t settle the blood rushing in her ears. Something about seeing the shit they’re feeding him plate, the scraps she would’ve been eating if she were starving on Jakku, pushed her right over the edge. There are tears in her eyes. She wipes them away angrily. She hates how easily they come, these days. Always on the surface, always a heavy weight. It makes her feel weak. It makes her look fragile. 

Ben looks a little taken aback. 

_ “Fine,”  _ he grinds out. He retrieves the plate and takes the bread roll, turning it over in his hands. He takes a bite, if only to appease her. 

Rey can’t even look at him. Instead, she glares at Torbond out of the corner of her eyes, watching his mustache quiver. She picks at a loose thread in her sleeve. 

She’d come here expecting a bit of refuge from the whispers, the eyes that follow her wherever she goes. She’d come here wanting nothing more than to let him wrap his arms around her, but they’re sitting five feet apart with electromag bars between them, staring down the barrel of a blaster, a thousand unspoken things drying up in her throat. 

Rey gets to her feet. 

“I’m tired,” she says thinly. 

“Rey,” Ben entreats.

“Goodnight,” she mutters, avoiding his gaze, and marches toward the door. Torbond follows. She ignores him. 

She makes it through the door before the tears start to fall. Thank god. The last thing she need is for him to see her fall apart. 

“Rey!” Finn says. His face falls when he sees the look on her face. “Hey, are you okay?” 

“I’m fine. I just, I need . . . I need to be alone. Please.” She pushes past him, leaving him alone in the clearing with Kazz and Torbond and the mournful cry of some nocturnal creature hidden in the shadows. 

* * *

Ben hurls his tray against the wall. It hits the duracrete with a clang and clatters to the floor. He gets up, begins to pace. He runs a hand through his hair, grinding his teeth in frustration. 

_ Stupid!  _

_ Stupid stupid stupid stupid.  _

He doesn’t even know what he  _ did _ to make her storm out like that, but he was certain about one thing: he’d fucked up. Royally. 

“Godsdammnit!” he hisses, under his breath, turning an about-face. A stares at the wall. It taunts him. The tray hadn’t been sufficient enough to vent his frustration, but his fist would do. He slams his hand against the duracrete, splitting two of his knuckles. Scarlet runs in rivulets down his fingers and pools his palm. He sucks at the blood, appreciative of the sting. Anything to ground him. Anything to take his mind off her. 

She will be the death of him. Gods, the things she brings out in him . . . 

Calamity. Calm. She didn’t even have to try. He belonged to her. Body and soul.

He collapses on his cot, burying his face in his pillow. He’s absolutely  _ trash  _ at this. He doesn’t even know what this  _ thing  _ is between them. He just knows she kissed him, and he kissed her back, and then they just were. Ben and Rey and Rey and Ben. The Dyad. 

They hadn’t even had a proper conversation since . . . since what? Since he came back. Exegol? Since he woke in the cave beneath Ahch-To lying parallel to her on the stone floor. He’d gathered her in his arms, once-white garb bright fucking red. That had been high on the list of most terrifying moments in his life. The kind of moment that stopped time for him, and the only thing that mattered was her and the deathly pallor of her lips, the sheen of sweat on her brow and the pain clouded in her hazel eyes. The eyes that held reflections of himself as he  _ really  _ was, when Kylo Ren’s mask was stripped away. Her eyes felt like coming home. The only thing that mattered was making sure she kept those eyes on him. That she held on for just a little longer. 

That terrifying moment was second only to the day he really  _ had  _ lost her. He can’t get the memory of her cold cheek against his own as he’d held her, heavy in death, and somehow smaller. Her eyes had haunted him, most of all. They still haunt him. Whenever he looks at her, he has to convince himself that those hazel eyes are not the eyes that had stared so sightlessly up at him, made of stone. Her eyes burn like a thousand suns. 

He dreams about those stone eyes every single night, and every single night he wakes with wet cheeks and bloodied hands from where his fingernails had ripped into the skin of his palms. 

He doesn’t get much sleep these days.

There are other dreams, too. Dreams of thick mists and darkness and bodilessness. He dreams about what it had been like to die. He doesn’t like to think about those dreams because the alternative was facing an existential crisis he just didn’t have the emotional or mental capacity to deal with. Those dreams always left residual feelings of in-betweenness. Like he’d forgotten how to breathe. 

He needs a distraction, but distractions are hard to come by in this damned cell. So he dozes and he floats in between and he dreams about the woman he loves with eyes made of stone. 

He just wants to get out of here. Maybe then he can start to make sense of it. Where he'd come from and what lay ahead. Hell, he’d  _ died _ . He can’t just walk away from that without some unpacking, and he has  _ a lot  _ of unpacking to do. Seven year’s worth of baggage—abandonment issues, patriacide, death . . . and don’t even get him started on his own impending fatherhood. 

_ Force _ , he really is a human disaster.

The doors open with a hiss, and Ben listens to a set of footsteps draw nearer. He assumes it’s that insufferable guard, determined to make his life hell. Ben flexes his fingers, fantasizing about crushing his trachea. 

“If you point one more blaster in my face, I’ll break your other hand,” Ben warns, as the footsteps pause outside his cell. 

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Ben raises his head from the cot. FN-2187 stands outside his cell, arms folded across his chest. He scowls at Ben. 

Ben raises an eyebrow. 

FN-2187 drops into the chair where Rey had been sitting, just minutes before. He reaches into his jacket and withdraws a small flask from its depths. He uncaps it and tips it back, taking a pull.

He shudders, re-capping it. He holds it out to Ben. 

“Whiskey?”

Ben accepts, sipping from the flask. It burns on the way down. The taste is familiar, though he can’t quite put his finger on it. It dulled his senses and made it difficult to keep his thoughts gaurded. Apart from the occasional glass of wine at the cocktail parties, balls and banquets his mother always dragged him to, he’d rarely indulged in this kind of thing. He’d sworn off worldly pleasure when he’d taken up the mantle of Kylo Ren. Though he had access to more drink, drugs and women than he knew what to do with, that lifestyle had never appealed to him. He knew what kind of filth Hux liked to roll in. It was beneath him. 

It is precisely the thing he needs right now, though. Just enough to take the edge off. Maybe it would keep the nightmares invading his bed like they did, every night since he’d come back from the dead. 

Ben takes another sip, and another. The woody smell is familiar.

“Is this Corellian?” he asks. 

FN nods. 

It takes him back in time. He could be five, six, seven years old, laying awake and waiting to hear his father stumble through the door. There would be muffled shouting, his mother would slam the door, and then lopsided footsteps would make their way up to his room. Ben would keep his eyes firmly and pretend to be asleep while Han picked his way over the model ships strewn about the floor, swearing enough to make pirates blush when he stepped on one of the figurines. Once he made it past the minefield, he’d pull Ben’s bedsheets up to his chin and plant a stubbly kiss to his forehead. He’d always get a whiff of this same smell. A combination of engine grease, cigarra smoke, and Corellian whiskey. 

Ben puts his father out of his mind. He takes another, hefty swallow before returning the flask to FN. 

“So, what, we're supposed to be friends now?” he asks. 

FN frowns. He leans forward, elbows balanced on his knees. He meets Ben's eyes with a sour look. 

“Look, I don’t particularly like you and between you and me, if they decide to execute you it wouldn’t weigh too heavily on my conscience, but Rey is my best friend and she obviously cares for you, so I think it’s best, for her sake, if you and I learned to tolerate each other.” 

Ben cocks an eyebrow. He regards Finn with a dispassionate stare. 

“I can manage that,” he says, after a pause. 

_ “You can?” _ FN yelps, before papering over his surprise with an air of nonchalance. “You can?”

Ben nods, slowly.

“She thinks highly of you. She says she owes you her life. I think I can be civil if you can, too.” 

They’re silent, after that. Ben surveys the ex-stormtrooper’s face with disinterest. FN-2187 scratches at the stubble on his chin. His knee bounces erratically, like he wants to be anywhere but here. 

“For the record, I don’t  _ want  _ them to kill you,” FN says, after a while. “I mean, I know how Rey would feel if . . . if you . . .” he trails off, looking away. “I mean, she . . . well, she went crazy,” he finishes lamely. Ben cocks an eyebrow. “When she thought you were dead, I mean,” he adds. “You were dead, weren’t you?”

Ben just nods. 

“That’s impossible.” 

Ben shrugs. He knocks back another gulp of whiskey. 

“How did you come back?” 

“It’s a long story.” 

He doesn’t owe this man an explanation when all he’d agreed to was a begrudging coexistence, but something pulls him up short. Something about the earnestness in the younger man’s face. It occurs to him what’s missing from that face. The revulsion he’s used to seeing isn't there, just a mixture of cautiousness and mild curiosity. 

On any First Order ship, he’d always been regarded with a mixture of awe and fear. Most of the officers kept to themselves. None of them were quite so stupid to draw attention to themselves, and whenever they were required to speak to him the answer was always yes. Yes, Supreme Leader, because telling him no was a death sentence. They went about their business, and their fear hung in the air like a stench. They wouldn’t voluntarily get within teen feet of him if they could help it, and he liked that just fine. They were beneath him, and more often than not his thoughts lay on distant worlds, dwelling on the scavenger girl who wouldn’t so much as look at him even when the connection they shared only grew stronger. 

When she did speak to him, she hurled insults at him with the intention of landing a physical blow, but she always betrayed herself, and it only exacerbated the terrible, starving pulse in his heart that beat only for her. He needed her like he needed a balm to heal the wounds in his heart that had only deepened over the years. She infected him, made him crazy. When he was thinking about her, he was dreaming about her, and he could feel himself slowly inching toward some precipice, below which lay sharp rocks. he’d gotten her hooks into him, and then everything else he’d wanted so badly. The throne, an Empire . . . it all seemed lackluster compared to her. 

He believed she was his weakness, but he couldn’t have been more wrong. There weren’t sharp rocks at the bottom of that precipice. There were only ashes. And he’d risen from them anew. 

Ben studies FN over the tops of his tented fingers. He’s different, somehow. The others looked at him with abhorrence, and the fear was always there. Like a herd of sheep pressed tightly together to keep the wolf from breaking ranks, they looked at him through the whites of their eyes and they feared him, because he is Kylo Ren and he is a genocidal murderer and a monster and some venomous insect which must be squashed. 

FN is different, somehow. He is the only person here besides Rey who had treated him like a human being, and that is no small thing. Rey trusts this man, loves him, even, and that somehow felt like an endorsement on her part.

“Rey died on Exegol. She killed Palpatine, but the effort killed her. I transferred my life force into her so she could live. That was all I ever intended. I knew I was going to die, but I didn’t care, because she deserved to live more than I did, and because I’d finally done something good, you know? She had people counting on her, people who cared for her. She was the only person . . .” Ben swallows hard, working out the lump in his throat. “She was the only I had that made it all worth it. Without her, I . . . I couldn't . . .” he falls silent, for fear of betraying the fact that his voice is thick with tears. 

“The thing is, when I brought her back I wasn’t even thinking about any of that. I mean, I suppose I was, but the only going through my head in that moment, the only goddamned thought in my brain was that I didn’t want to live in a world without her. I couldn’t face a world that dark.” He licks his lips nervously. “I didn’t even hesitate.” 

“She would’ve done the same for you,” Finn says, “and I hate you for it. You’re right. She’s the one who deserves to live, and I thank the Maker every goddamned day that she didn’t bleed out trying to save your miserable ass.” 

Ben watches him through bleary, bloodshot eyes. He takes another pull of whiskey.

“You and me, both,” he mutters.

“Maybe that’s selfish, I don’t really care. I just know that if I had to push you off a cliff to save her, I’d do it. Without hesitation.”

“At least we agree on something,” Ben says. “I’d kill you if you didn’t.” 

That gets a laugh. It’s quiet and hesitant, but it’s there and Ben finds himself laughing, too, at this absurd  _ something  _ they’ve worked out. If the only thing keeping them from killing each other is their mutual concern for Rey’s safety and well-being, then so be it. 

“How are you alive then, if you died on Exegol?” 

“I don’t know,” Ben says. “I wish I did. I have my theories, but . . .” 

He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I think it all comes down to the fact that Rey and I are a dyad in the Force. Neither of us can live without the other. We either leave this world together, or we stay in it together. The Force . . . wasn’t done with me. It brought me back. It brought us  _ both  _ back. It brought us back for a reason. To keep the balance, maybe. To raise our child. I don’t know.” He leans back, picking at the stinging, scabbed knuckles. 

“I don’t think I’ll ever really know the answer to that question. I’ve tried to answer questions before. I’ve tried to harness the universe in my hands and I’ve tried to wield it like a weapon. I’ve tried to be bigger than I am, but the truth is, I don’t think any of us can really understand why things happen. Why things are and why things come to be. I just know that I owe my salvation to the scavenger girl from Jakku. I know that she cares for me in a way that I can’t explain and don’t deserve, and I know that I care for her, too.” 

Even that is an understatement. 

He wants to say he loves her, and that it kills him to admit it because everyone else he has ever loved is dead, and that even though it scares him, he'll keep loving her because she is the only thing he has left. He couldn’t stop loving her if he tried. He’ll keep loving her because the alternative is living in a world that is colorless and empty. He has always felt too much too deeply. He has always worn his whole self on the outside, too ready to give it away. It's why he needed the mask. It’s why he thought he needed to kill that part of himself that felt too much, that wanted so desperately to love and be loved in return. He hadn’t recognized the grace in those very human failures. He hadn’t realized it was strength, rather than weakness. At least, not until she’d so completely captured him. 

“That’s why I came back,” he says, “I can still do some good. I wasted my first life. I won't waste this one.” 

“You don’t have a choice. Take care of her, or I’ll kill you myself. Never mind the firing squad.” FN sticks out his hand, reaching through the bars. “Deal?”

Ben meets his eyes. He clasps his hand. 

“Deal.” 

Finn rises from his chair, tucking the flask into his jacket. He makes toward the door. 

“One more thing,” FN calls, over his shoulder. “FN-2187 is just a number. It doesn’t belong to me.” He gives Ben a hard look. “Call me Finn.” 

“Finn,” he echoes, with a nod. “Alright, Finn. It's a deal. I'll call you Finn if you call me Ben. Kylo Ren is dead. My name is Ben Solo." 

Finn’s lips twitch.

“I think I can manage that.” 

* * *

Rey wakes to the soft touch of fingertips trailing her back. Something heavy is slung across her body, and it takes her a moment to realize that something is Ben’s arm, draped protectively over her abdomen. His breath tickles her neck. She nuzzles closer to him on instinct, eding slowly back into sleep, before it fully registers in her brain. Her eyes fly open. She sits up with a jolt. He smiles when he notices she’s awake. He hadn’t been sleeping. He’d been watching her, tracing small circles between her shoulder blades, a look of complete and utter contentment painted on his face. The shadows and the bed-head and the glow of embers in the hearth make him softer, somehow, than she’d ever seen him. 

“Ben?” she asks, more than a little confused. 

“Hey,” he murmurs. 

“Hey,” she returns, sleepily. She scoots closer to his warmth.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he says, drawing her to him with an arm snug around her shoulders. 

She sits up, coming to her senses. She’s sure her face is white in the darkness. 

“You shouldn’t be here. They’ll catch you. 

“They won’t know the difference.” 

“They’ve got around the clock surveillance! Poe upped the security. They’re probably looking for you.” 

“I scrambled their monitoring system before I left. It’ll be a hell of a job for their technicians. It should take them a couple hours to sort out, at least. You of all people should have a little more faith in me, scavenger,” he said, smirking. “Or do you take me for a fool?” 

“Hardly,” she says, matching his smirk. “I just wouldn’t peg you as someone who knows their way around wires.”

“I can scramble yours easy enough, can’t I?” 

“Sod off!” she cries, smacking his shoulder playfully. She can’t keep the smile off her face. “How’d you even get out, anyway?” 

“A toddler could’ve broken out of that cell,” he says. He frowns. “I had to see you. I couldn’t leave you to go to bed angry,” he draws a line from the tip of her nose to her bottom lip with his finger. She lets her eyelids flutter cloesd.

“I’m sorry, cyar'ika,” he murmurs. 

“You think I’m angry with you?” Rey asks, incredulous. “You’re the only person I _ don’t _ want to murder right now. I’m angry with those moof-milkers for giving you bantha fodder instead of food. Poe’s pissing me off, and I can’t really stand myself, at the moment. I can’t believe I was stupid enough to believe they’d actually give you a second chance. I’m the one who should be sorry.” She kisses him, just to prove it. He tastes like whiskey. 

“Have you been drinking?”

“Finn and I spoke. He offered me a drink.” 

Rey goes cold. 

“Gods, Ben, you didn’t—” 

“I didn’t pick a fight with him, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he says. “We agreed to . . . tolerate each other, for your sake.” 

“My heroes,” she deadpans. 

“I’m not about to start kissing his ass. We agreed not to kill each other. That’s all.” He tucks a stand of hair behind her ear. 

“Well, I appreciate it. Really, I do. The last thing I want is you two to be at each other’s throats. We need him on our side. People respect him.  _ Poe  _ respects him. Plus, you two might have more in common that you’d think.” 

She kisses his cheek. “Thank you for trying,” she murmurs. “I know this isn’t ideal. I know you can’t stand it here. I know I’m asking a lot. I know the only reason you’re putting up with this is because of me. You shouldn’t have to.” 

“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, cyar'ika,” he says. “You understand that, don’t you?” 

“I’m trying to.” 

Rey takes his hand, cybernetic fingers interlacing with his biological ones. He raises the prosthetic to his lips, planting a kiss to each, cold fingertip. 

“It really is beautiful,” he says, covering her mechno-hand with his own. “It suits you.”He traces a line down her wrist with his fingertips, where the cold metal fuses with the scarring. flesh.

“If I’d been there—” 

“Ben—” 

“No,  _ listen _ —” 

“You were dead!” she cries, incredulous. “ _ I  _ had to face her. I lost a hand along the way. So what? I’m not the first. I won’t be the last. There’s a reason there’s at least three prosthetics shops within a twenty-kilometer radius of here.” she says.”It’s not the end of the world.” 

Ben’s lips tremble. He presses them in a thin line. “It never would’ve happened if I—” 

“If you  _ what _ , Ben? It has nothing to do with you. It’s not your job to protect me. It was a price I was willing to pay to recover what I lost.” She presses her hand, open-palmed, over the place where his heart beats. “It was worth it, I promise.”

He takes her face in his hands and kisses her. He caresses the knape of her neck, cheeks wet with tears. She fists her hand in his hair, deepening the kiss. It gets hungrier, needier. Ben is restless against her hips. His fingers dip under the hem of her shirt, fingertips skimming her bare skin. Goose pimples erupt over her flesh. 

He lays her down on the mattress and straddles her, pinning her wrists. His breathing heavily, his cheeks flushed in the dim light. He nips her earlobe, pressing a line down the column of her neck before sealing their mouths. 

Her teeth clip his bottom lip. It’s not enough to draw blood, but enough to make his pupils dilate. Enough to make him tense beneath her fingertips. They’re edging toward that precipice, chasing something. This is the first time she’s had him in her bed without that cold truth cutting through the fog of dopamine, the needling voice that chirped in her ear—he was nothing more than a fantasy she’d created. They’d fucked before, but it had always felt like a lie, like a dream that left her aching and empty when it was over. 

This is different. He’s really here, alive under her fingertips, asking her to give herself to him and giving himself in return. She should be nervous, but she’s not. She just  _ wants _ .

She’s never been squeamish about things like this.There’d been no shortage of gratuitous displays of affection in the seedier parts of Jakku. Sex is a part of life. Laying with him like this feels like the most natural thing in the world, where they share the same breath, where she can feel his skin on her skin, and there’s electricity in every nerve, powerless in his grip, drowning in his ocean. He is waves that push against her, threatening to drag her under. 

She is a storm, strong enough to contain him, to temper him, sink with him. She pushes him toward the edge, and she likes the way she can make him surrender to her. She is strong enough to love him, to ride or die for him, to create life with him. She is strong enough, to walk through the valley of death with him and emerge on the other side. 

She doesn’t owe him her strength, but he brings it out in her. He pushes her buttons, crosses her wires. He is the spark to her gunpowder keg, and she lets him set her aflame. 

His lips travel down her neck. He cups the plush hills of her breasts and sucks bruises on the skin there. He works his way to her navel, where she’s swollen with new motherhood. She sighs, letting herself fall apart under his lips. She’s never been good at pleasuring herself. She thinks too much, distracted by what she thinks it’s supposed to be. With him, it’s easy to let it consume her, overriding all senses, opposing all notions of what it’s supposed to be in favor of what it  _ is _ . She focuses on giving and taking, and it’s easy to let go. 

He pulls off her underwear in one fluid motion. She untangles her legs, and lays back, letting him see her. All of her. She watches his face, the expressions chasing across it and the crimson burning high in his cheeks. 

“You’re beautiful,” he gasps, voice ragged at the edges and a bit breathless, dipping his chin to recapture her lips. His large hands span her thighs, coaxing them apart. She laughs against his mouth, catching his hand and guiding it toward her center. 

She lays back, hips spasming against his touch. Her knees quiver. She closes her eyes, and his name is on her lips. She’s edging toward a release and tries to resist, wanting it to last. He withdraws, and she’s hollow with the absence. 

_ “Ben,” _ she begs, fisting a hand in his hair. One hand spans her thigh, the other fumbles with his waistband, and then he’s inside her, and she bites off a shuddering cry. 

He begins to move, and there’s a rightness to it. She receives him, matching his rhythm, exhaling, eyes wet with relief as he fills her up, makes her whole. The bond is guiding her. Telling her what to do, what he needs. She’s still got her back to the mattress. She arches her back involuntarily, grinding her hips upward. He curses. His hands twitch at her hips. It is in his nature to control, to dominate, but she seizes his hands, fingernails digging into the tops of them, begging him to let go. She asks him to sink with her. 

Their edges dissolve. The bond is singing. She can feel his pleasure like it’s her own. She’s reaching that precipice, and once she falls over the edge she knows he’ll fall with her. 

She keeps her eyes on his face, and through the sex-haze she can feel him coming undone. She comes undone with him. And they fall. 

They collapse, breathless. Rey pulls her to him, lying on her back, chest heaving. He lets his head fall against her chest, over the place where her heart is hammering, wrapping her arms around her. Skin to skin, legs tangled together, sweating and naked and breathing in the balmy air, enjoying the breeze that kisses their naked bodies. 

Rey brushes a damp, dark lock of hair from his forehead, pressing a kiss between his eyes. He’s trembling. She keeps brushing the hair back from his face, soothing away the tremors running through his body. He closes his eyes. His breath tickles her neck. She draws patterns over his broad, sinewy back with her real hand, mapping each scar and freckle. 

“I love you,” he mumbles. 

“I love you, too.” 

He lips his head, nudging her forehead with his own. He cups her cheek and seals his mouth to hers. The kiss is sweet and slow. It asks nothing of her but to be with him, here and now. It is softer than anything you’d expect from him, heir apparent to darkness, but then, nothing truer was ever spoken of him. He is a contradiction, meeting her turbulence with composure, her impulsivity with reason, her violence with compassion. 

Their kisses get sleepier, clumsier. Ben’s head finds her chest again, and her arms come up to cradle his head. 

“It’s quiet,” he says. . 

“Mmmm?” Rey asks, eyes sliding open as she pulls herself from the haze of in-betweenness in the blurred chasm dividing waking and sleeping. "What?" 

He raises his head, meeting her gaze. His face splits into a smile so incandescently radiant it’s contagious. His eyes shine with tears. 

“No more voices.” 

Rey presses her lips to his forehead, his eyelids, the tip of his nose, blinking back tears. His head returns to the hollow of her chest. His arms tighten around her, holding her close. Eventually, his breathing slows, and Rey feels him drift off. She lets herself follow him into sleep’s open arms, confident there will be no nightmares tonight. In those last, in-between moments, she thinks she feels a tiny flutter. A quickening in her womb. One, impossibly small movement, but unmistakable. 

She smiles, gathering Ben a little tighter against her body. She drifts off, and the last thought that registers in her mind lies with the budding life inside her, contented and ensconced in the warmth of their entwined minds. 


	36. The Trial

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope y'all had a wonderful May 4th!

Rey vomits the contents of her stomach into the toilet. When she finishes, she flushes it and watches all remnants disappear. She sits back, waiting for the room to start spinning. She really thinks she ought to be over the morning sickness by now, but the baby seems to have other plans.

She rubs a soothing hand over her belly, struggling to her feet. She gargles water to get that horrid taste out of her mouth, glaring at her sweat-streaked face and bloodless lips in the mirror. 

Ben’s trial is today. He’ll stand up in front of a council of Core-World representatives while they decide if he lives or dies. Her stomach churns unpleasantly. Rey takes a couple, small sips of water, trying to calm herself. Pregnancy and nerves aren’t a good combination. 

Rey brushes her teeth. She combs her hair and sticks it in its usual, triple buns, aiming for a recognizable appearance. She’s wearing long, ash-gray robes. She’ll be standing up in front of the same people who spent countless resources to find a map that led to Luke Skywalker, holding onto the tiniest hope that he might turn the tide of the war. The more she aligns herself with the Jedi, the more likely the Council will listen to her when she tries to convince them to absolve Ben of the allegations against him. 

Rey takes a shuddering breath, trying to pull herself together. She double-checks her light-staff is secured to her belt, along with her blaster. She’d already stashed most of the essentials—an extra dose of painkillers, and a change of clothes—on the Falcon in case things get ugly. She’s prepared to smuggle Ben off-world should they decide to execute him. She’s been through too much, lost too much, to let that happen. No matter what the Council decides, they’re both getting off Kashyyyk. End of story. 

Rey pinches the bridge of her nose, trying to alleviate the beginnings of a tension headache. Her hands are shaking, and there’s a good chance she might vomit again. So much for the internal pep talk. It did nothing to calm her nerves. 

She collapses on her cot, resting her head in her hands. Her sheets are still heavy with the scent of him. She’d woken up wrapped in Ben’s sea-monster embrace, warm and safe, with the residue of a night’s deep, dreamless sleep clinging to her. She’d lain there, engulfed in him, breathing in his scent, sweat and earth, trying to enjoy the little bit of peace they’d stolen for as long as she could. She’d lain there with Ben wrapped in her arms, his nose buried in the crook of her neck. She’d lain there, threading her fingers through his hair, when Poe and his guards barged into her quarters.

She’d watched the disbelief, disgust and disappointment flash across Poe’s face in the space of a second as he took in the sight. The man he knew to be a genocidal mass-murderer nestled in her arms, both of them naked beneath the sheets, completely tangled in each other. She’d said nothing. What could she say? He’d seen the truth of them laid bare. She had nothing to say in her defense. Her love for him was unapologetic, as it should be. 

She only glared at Poe, daring him to say something, to make a move, holding him protectively to her chest. 

They’d taken him away from her, then. They put their hands on him, pulling the two of them apart. Ben had jolted awake with a cry falling from kiss-swollen lips, shadows immediately moving in to cloud his eyes as he faced off the guards, but in the end, he’d let them take him. She’d kicked and bit and fought them, earning herself a balck eye in the struggle, and then they’d gone, and she was alone in her quarters, shivering in his absence, with the impending trial at the forefront of her mind, worried she’d made everything worse for him. Terrified to the point of nausea, she’d rushed to the toilet and unloaded the contents of her stomach. 

Rey closes her eyes, taking another breath. She glues herself together, piece by piece, reaching inside herself. She makes herself a rock, an immovable fortress. When that’s done, and a deep calm stamps down her terror, she sets off, heading for the amphitheater. 

* * *

The Council members take turns reeling off a list of his crimes, each one worse than the last. _Development and testing of Starkiller Base and similar planet-killing weapons . . . accessory to the Hosnian Cataclysm. . . the murder of Lor San Tekka . . . the murder of Han Solo . . . attempted murder of Leia Organa . . ._ The list goes on. 

With each one, she watches Ben withdraw a little more inside himself. He stands at the podium, bound hands clutched to his chest, jaw clenched, as impassive as ever, but the charade doesn’t fool her. She knows this is the very thing he’d dreaded for so long. The reason he felt like he couldn’t come back home. This is his worst fear, and he’s living it. 

Rey sits on a bench to the left of him, a few rows up, beside Rose. She clenches her fists so tightly her fingernails bite into the insides of her palms. She fights to keep her panic at bay. She’s inside his head, trying to be there for him in ways she otherwise wouldn’t be able to be. Not physically, anyway. They won’t let her anywhere near him. 

Rose nudges her ribs with her elbow, catching Rey’s gaze.

 _What happened to your eye?_ she mouths. Rey jerks her chin, wishing she’d to drop the subject. The technician shrugs, returning her attention to the trial. Wordlessly, she covers Rey’s hand with her own, giving it a tight squeeze. 

Rey studies the faces of the council members, thirteen in total, chosen at random to preside over the trial. Most are unfamiliar, but Rey’s relieved to recognize Commander D’Acy among them. D’Acy, native to Warlentta and a long-time friend of Leia’s, had a level head and a kind heart. A retired war hero who’d specialized as a combat strategist for the Resistance’s ground forces, she was stalwart and hard as nails (you had to be, in that profession), but she stuck to her morals. Rey feels something loosen in her chest. 

The Council calls for witnesses to attest Ben’s crimes. Ben is shoved roughly to the side by two guards. Rey’s grip on Rose’s hand tightens.

She watches as the witnesses are called, one by one. They’ve gathered a large sampling from across the galaxy, not-so-subtly displaying the First Order’s dark and cancerous reach across the galaxy. An Ottegan member of the Crèche and a close friend of Lor San Tekka, families and friends of fallen Resistance heroes, a tearful Nu-Cosnian who’d survived the attack on Tuanul. She’d lost her husband and son in the massacre. The boy was only two years old. 

“He gave the order!” she shrieks, weeping now. She jabs a finger in Ben’s direction, and Rey thinks he folds a little more inside himself. “He gave the order, and they opened fire on a crowd of innocent men, women, and children. He murdered my husband! My son! A toddler!” She lets out a heart-wrenching wail, collapsing on the podium. Two moderators have to escort her offstage. 

Rey bites her lip, tears leaking from her eyes. She can feel Ben’s strings start to snap. She can feel old wounds start to open, start to bleed. 

_Palpatine was manipulating you!_ Rey yells, in his mind, trying to penetrate his defenses. Trying to get it through his head. _Ben, listen to me! You didn’t—_

 **_Get. Out. Of. My. Head!_ **he snarls, and then he severs the connection, leaving a cold numbness where she should feel him. Rey clamps a hand over her mouth, choking back a sob. She kicks herself. She never should’ve let it get to this point. They should’ve escaped on the Falcon when they had the chance. 

Next, the Council calls for volunteers to speak on Ben’s behalf. Rey stands, unsteady on her feet. The room spins in slow circles. She fights to keep her composure as she makes her way to the stage and steps up to the podium. 

She takes a shaky breath, shrinking under the gaze of a hundred pairs of eyes, unfolding the wrinkled piece of paper in her pocket. She stares at the words she’d scribbled on the page. She wasn’t a poet. She’d written and rewritten it, trying and failing to get it right. Eventually, she’d settled on a short, bulleted list and trusted the right words would come when she needed them to. 

Rey forces herself to address the ones who’d lost loved ones, acknowledging their grief and the hardship they’d suffered. She takes a breath, feeling lightheaded. She grips the podium to steady herself. Her eyes find Ben; he’s looking at her with pain in his eyes. She keeps her gaze trained on him, because he is all she has to cling to. 

She begins to speak. 

The crimes Kylo had committed were the fallout of a long and terrible war of which he was just a small part. He’d given her life to save her. He’d already served a life-sentence for his crimes. He’d killed Snoke. He’d helped her kill Palpatine. He’d turned to the tide of the war. He was Leia’s son. She’d wanted to bring him home from the moment Snoke had turned his heart. He would’ve been safe under her protection, and they should honor her memory by granting him the same immunity. 

She’d rehearsed it in her head, time after time, but it still felt stiff. It still paled in comparison to the weeping, childless mother in the stands, and all the wounds that hadn’t healed. The Nu-Cosnian widow is an unignorable reminder of the war’s terrible price, the scars that run too deep to see the sunlight. 

Her words are ill-received by the crowd. Rey feels her stomach sink through the floor. There’s rumblings in the audience. _Traitor_ , they hiss, and the word feels dirty. _Conspirator. Sympathizer. Traitor._ Their accusations leave bruises on her skin. 

She steps down from the podium with her head held high. Someone spits at her feet as she climbs the steps. The whispers follow her to her seat. She barely makes it to her place beside Rose before the tears start to fall. She tries to stop them, but they come anyway. She gazes at Ben’s withered form through the blur of tears, wishing she could protect him from this, from the unavoidable reminders of his past, of the abuse he’d suffered and the mistakes he’d made because of it, and years he was so lost to the dark he tried to destroy himself to escape the goodness in his heart, and very nearly succeeded. 

She’s so close to snapping, then, glimpsing the red marks Ben’s his wrists, watching him crumble as Edden Pike, the Corellian representative, a stuffy man with a mousy, pinched face and upturned nose, preaches to the choir about the big bad Kylo Ren and all the blood on his hands, demanding a prompt and merciless execution. 

Pike calls for objections to his demands, and Rey sits there, suffocating in the heavy, desert silence eating up all the air in the room. 

“Objections?” Pike calls, triumphantly. “None?” 

Rey is numb. She glances around the room, at the retired Resistance heroes among the stuffy politicians. Her comrades. Her _brothers_ and _sisters_ . The people she’d lived with, dined with, would’ve given her life to protect. The people who’d sacrificed _everything_ to unseat a fascist regime that showed its people no mercy. They were no longer the heroes she’d fought alongside. They were no better than the First Order. 

She tries to catch Ben’s eye, but he won’t look at her. His face is devoid of color, as impassive as stone and housing two, hollowed eyes Ben’s face is closed off. 

“Alright, moving on with the proceedings—” 

“I have an objection.” 

Rey looks up, stunned. She glances around the room, searching for the source of the voice. When she sees him, her jaw drops. 

Poe Dameron rises from his chair. 

“General Dameron?” Pike splutters, just as surprised as Rey is. 

Poe reaches the podium. He taps the amplifier, clearing his throat. He catches Rey’s eye, then turns, addressing the jury. 

“I’d like to speak in defense of Ben Solo.” 

* * *

In the end, it’s Poe who sways them. _Poe_ , their golden child, their hero, their general. He stands up and defends Ben in front of the Council, asking them to show mercy to the son of Leia Organa, to meet violence with reason and mercy. Finn joins in, then Rose and Chewie, and Rey sits there, stunned to silence by the outpouring of support from her friends, her _family_ , as they face off a room full of crusty politicians in support of Ben Solo. 

Pike relents, rodent face pinched with displeasure. The Council members cast their vote. By a seven to six majority, Ben wins his case. He would live, but he’d be exiled to the Outer Rim for the remainder of his life, with a potential for a revised or revoked sentence after a fifteen year period. A rumble of dissent echoes through the crowd, but Rey’s grinning. 

It’s more than she could’ve hoped for. 

The audience disperses, and Rey leaves the amphitheater in a daze, tears streaming down her face. She pushes through the crowd, searching for Ben. 

She finds him on the platform and watches as two escorts lead him away, hands still bound, still bowed, bent, broken. When he catches sight of her, his face softens, but the shadows are still there and an unmistakable pallor clings to his cheeks. He’d re-opened the bond to her, and she senses his relief, combatting a whirlwind of other emotions that war inside him, things he tries and fails to keep from her. Remorse, guilt, self-loathing. Above all, though, he’s caught in the throes of a bone-deep weariness that grips his core. The trial had taken its toll on him, and she wants nothing more than to retreat to her quarters with him, to fold him in her arms and never let go. 

“What’re you doing?” she demands. “Release him!” 

A hand falls on her shoulder. She shrugs it off, whirling around to find herself face to face with Poe. 

“This is temporary. He’ll be confined to his cell until proceedings are finalized and his ship readied. He’ll be released in the morning.”

“But—

“I don’t think you want to argue with me on this one. It’s for his own safety, Rey. You saw that crowd. I promise, by sun up, he’ll be free to get off world.” 

“At least remove the restraints,” she pleads, meeting Poe’s eyes. “He doesn’t need them.” 

Poe’s gaze flits between Rey and Ben and back again. Finally, he looks at the guards, motioning for them to remove the electromag binders chafing against his wrists. They fall away with a hiss, and Ben wrings his hands, grimacing.

He opens his arms, and she doesn’t hesitate to walk straight into them. He pulls her against his chest, pressing a kiss to her forehead. He pulls away, gripping her shoulder. She gazes into his eyes. There’s a million things she ought to say. She tries to convey everything she needs to say without betraying the enormity of her relief to the crowd of onlookers sidling past, knowing who they were and where their allegiances lay. 

“I’ll be fine,” he says. His thumb ghosts her cheekbone. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

“Ben—” 

He soothes her doubts with a mental nudge, cloaking her mind in warmth, and it’s only then she relents, hackles flattening, muscles uncoiling. 

She watches them frog-march him away, across the bridge, onto the lift, and into the forest’s darkness, trying to relieve the tightness in her chest. She looks at Poe. 

“You vouched for him,” she says, softly. _Why?_

“Yeah, well,” he says, with a shrug. “I had some time to think and . . . ” He kicks at a pebble, watching it skitter to the edge of the platform. “You made some excellent points.” 

“You talked to Leia,” Rey says, softly, realization dawning on her. 

“Okay, fine,” Poe concedes, running a nervous hand through his hair. “She threatened to boot me into the Western Reaches if I let anything happen to him. I had to try.” 

Rey cocks a brow, a smile twitching on her lips. 

“I don’t like him. I don’t respect him. I wouldn’t particularly miss him if he were dead, but I loved Leia and I respect the future she wants for her son.” He steels a glance at her. “Plus, I knew you’d hate me through a thousand lifetimes if I didn’t at least _try_ to put in a good word, so, there, happy?” he finishes, wild-eyed, shrinking back like he’s expecting her to hit him. 

“Yes,” Rey breathes, and her eyes are shining with tears. She throws her arms around him, crushing him in a tight hug. _“Thank you.”_

“Lemme get in on this,” a voice says, behind them, and then Finn’s hugging them, lifting them off the ground, and she can’t breath for all the limbs and masculinity ensnaring her, and then Rose joins, and Chewie, and even BB-8, to form the group hug to put all other group hugs to shame. 

Rey wipes the tears from her eyes, unable to breathe for laughter. 

Poe’s grinning. Finn claps him on the back.

“I need a drink,” Rose says, eyes glinting, “who’s up for a round of beers?” 

* * *

They gather around one of the bonfires, splitting a couple cases of Ebla beer between them as night falls. Rey nurses a soda pop, in observance of her pregnancy. Finn claims he’s abstaining for her sake, but Rey catches him sneaking sips from Poe’s drink. She lets him off the hook. 

Poe and Finn fall into deep discussion about the stormtrooper demobilization program. 

“Ughh, can we _not_ talk about work right now?” Rose says, with a groan. She flicks popcorn in Poe’s direction. “I just want to do stupid shit and get drunk and forget about my problems. Just for a few hours. _Please_?” 

Poe shrugs. 

“Thank you,” Rose says, graciously. “God, I miss the good old days when the only thing we were worried about was blowing up some dreadnaughts.” 

Poe murmurs in agreement. 

“You know how long it’s been since I’ve been in the cockpit of an X-wing?” he asks, sloshing beer down his front. “Too fucking long.” 

Finn puts an arm around Poe. 

“At least I get to see more of you, now that you’re not married to _Black One_ ,” he says, kissing Poe’s cheek. 

“Rest in peace,” Poe mutters. His cheeks are ruddy, words slurring together. He cracks another beer and raises it to the stars, toasting the fallen X-wing. He knocks it back in one go. 

“Rest in peace,” Rey echoes, solemnly. 

“Hey, Rey, are we gonna talk about what I walked in on this morning?” Poe says, stifling a belch. 

“Drop it, Dameron,” Rey warns. 

“Well, now you _have_ to tell us,” Rose whines. 

“I walked in on . . . her and Ren, and they were . . .”

 _“Poe, don’t you dare,”_ she growls. She draws an imaginary line across her throat. 

“Oh, god,” he groans. “I'm reliving it. Ohhhh, now I can’t unsee it. Oh god. I’m gonna need another drink,” he reaches for the case, but Finn holds it out of reach. 

“I don’t think so, Dameron,” Finn says. 

“Wait, hold on!” Rose yells. “Rey and Ren did _what_ now?”

“I walked in and they were . . . ” He pauses for effect, bleary eyes flitting between them. Rey buries her face in her hands with a groan. His voice drops to a loud whisper. _“They were naked.”_

“Poe!” Rey cries, furious. 

_“Naked?”_ Rose yelps. She looks at Rey, grinning wickedly. She wiggles her eyebrows. Blood boils in Rey’s cheeks. She averts her gaze, entirely too sober to be dealing with this. She glares at Poe. 

“You’re dead to me.” 

“Hey, now we’re even,” he says, nudging her shoulders. 

Rey rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling. She takes in the faces of her friends, framed by the firelight, feeling light and fuzzy despite her sobriety. She has a whole new life ahead. They'd settle on a remote planet in the Outer Rim and build a new order. They’d raise their child, and maybe then she could finally stop looking over her shoulder, and they could finally rest. 

Looking around the fireside, she confirms the bittersweet truth she’d suspected for a while now. She no longer has a place in this story. She’d be no help to the galaxy chasing after Poe and Finn as they went back to politics and peacekeeping and diplomacy. She’d be more use to the galaxy doing what she did best: fixing broken things. She’d protect the ones like her. The nobodies. The lost and the broken. The ones abandoned on dusty, shithole planets, always looking to the horizon in search of something better. She’d give them a home, a place to learn, to regain their footing and find their path. She’d train them to recognize the Force, to wield it and to keep the balance, and they would teach her more than she could ever teach them. 

That is her path. That is her legacy. But it could wait until tomorrow. Tomorrow, she’d board the Falcon with Ben. She’d say goodbye to her friends. For now, at least. She’s start her life with him. 

Those goodbyes can wait. She doesn’t have the strength for it. Not yet. Right now, she wants to savor every last moment with the family she’d built for herself. 

Finn throws his arm around her. She leans into him, letting him anchor her in this moment, which feels so momentously ordinary, and she knows the nostalgia will hit her later. It’s the sweet tragedy of knowing you’ll miss the moment while you’re still living it. Knowing it’ll end, sometime, and sooner than you think. Someday she'll pause in one of the quiet moments to reflect on where she’d been and how far she’d come, and she’d remember, with tears in her eyes not entirely sorrowful but joyful, too, sitting here by this fire under these stars, surrounded by the greatest people she’d ever known or would ever come to know, riding the high of a war sorely won, marked by her a lover’s lips and comforted by the tiny flutters in her womb. 

Finn shoots her a questioning look. He must’ve seen the tears in her eyes. “You okay?” 

She nods. “I’m okay.

“Positive?” 

“They’re not _those_ kind of tears,” she assures him. 

“You’re sure?” 

“A thousand percent sure.” 

“That’s a lot.” 

“Well, I’m a lot sure,” she says, and for once, she means it. He kisses her forehead, pulling her close. She rests her head on his shoulder. 

She laughs with Finn and Rose as Poe entertains them with tales from his days as a spice-runner. They make cheap passes at Finn after he embarasses himself trying to shotgun one of the beers. The hour grows late, and her eyelids grow heavy, 

Chewie is first, then Rose and Poe, who bid them an overzealous goodnight and stomp off with their arms slung around one another, singing some old war song. They’re painfully off-key. 

“Gods,” Finn mutters, with a grimace. “They sound like a mudhorn in heat.” 

Rey snickers. 

He offers to walk her to her quarters. They cross the bridge hand in hand, and when they reach her door, he pulls her into a tight hug that lingers a bit too long. Rey tries to regain her composure as Finn breaks the embrace, holding her at arm’s length. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” he says, firmly. She forces herself to meet his gaze, unable to hide her tears. When had she ever been able to hide anything from him, anyway?

“Okay.” 

She manages a smile, but there’s a weight behind it, some unspoken thing she finds reflected in Finn’s eyes. She knows this is a goodbye in itself, and that is almost unbearable to think about, so she puts it out of her mind. Instead, she stands a little straighter, wiping the tears from her cheeks, and bids him goodnight. 

That night, she lays awake, alone in a cot that’s too big without Ben to fill the empty space. She lays awake and stares at the dying embers in the hearth and rehearses all the goodbyes she knows she’ll never be able to say because of the lump in her throat, bigger than both of Tatooine’s suns put together. 

* * *

Ben stares at the wall, numbed to the enormity of his exoneration. Dameron, for reasons unknown, had defended him in front of hundreds of his subordinates, peers, and superiors. He no longer had a bounty on his head, and in the morning he’d set out for the Outer Rim with Rey by his side. There is no war to wage, no battle to fight, and no voices in his head, and yet, he can’t put his mind at ease. 

The Nu-Cosnian widow’s voice echoes in his head, over and over, until her words start to sound garbled and meaningless. Her words pry at the shadowy wells in his heart. He squeezes his eyes shut, but the image of her tear-streaked face is seared into the backs of his eyelids. He tries to numb himself spiral of guilt and self-loathing threatening to consume him, but those paths of thinking were ones he’d trodden so many times, they were second nature. He’d tried to suffocate that darkness for so long. He’d tried to hide from it. He thought he could escape it, but it had finally found him. He feels his strings snapping. 

It’s one thing to listen to all those people stir up the muddy waters of his conscience. It’s another, entirely, to watch the proof of the monstrosity he’d become reflecting in Rey’s eyes. The Nu-Cosnian had shoved the truth of what he was right under her nose, where she couldn’t ignore it any longer. She’d been so stubborn, and so blinded by Ben Solo’s light she couldn’t see his darkness. He’d tried to preserve that lie for as long as he could, drunk on the mystifying notion that she didn’t shudder when he touched her. He’d believed she accepted what he was and loved him anyway, but it’s clear that her devotion is exclusive to the ideal she’d built in her head. 

He is not Ben Solo. Not the Ben Solo she wanted him to be, anyway. He cannot go back to the person he was before he turned to the dark side. He has scars that run too deep, and ghosts that won’t leave him alone. He’d stood on the podium, shrinking under unignorable reminders of the blood on his hands, and he’d seen what he’d dreaded most shining in her eyes: fear. Fear of him. She’d listened to the mothers and fathers, sons and daughters bewail the deaths of their loved ones, people he’d _murdered_ , and he’d known, with a cold dread, that whatever fantasy he’d let himself entertain was gone. She’d finally begun to see him for what he is. 

A monster. 

It doesn’t matter that these people hate him. He’s used to it. He’d weathered it all his life, since he’d read those first inklings of fear in his mother’s eyes. 

_There’s too much Vader in him,_ she’d told Han, as he stood outside their bedroom with a scream dying in his throat and tears in his eyes, the fear of the monster in his closet winning over the fear of disappointing his father, who always got angry with him and told him he was too old to be afraid of the dark. 

_He’s gotta get over it, Leia! He’s too old for co-sleeping._

It was one of his parents’ biggest points of contention, one they bickered over endlessly. He knew his father would be angry with him, but he had to get away from that terrible voice in his head. 

He stood outside their bedroom, staring at the sliver of light coming under the door, trying to swallow his panic. 

“There’s too much Vader in him.” 

Leia’s voice was hushed and small, like a child’s. She had always been this pillar of strength in his life. An unshakeable force. It hurt to hear her speak of him with a tremor in her voice. 

He took his hand off the knob and forced himself to return to his room, where monsters awaited him in the shadows. He can still remember his childhood bedroom, with the big, four-poster bed and red curtains and the glow-in-the-dark stars plastered to the ceiling. He knew, though he didn’t quite know _how_ he knew, that he wasn’t alone in that room. He also knew that whatever it was, it had come for _him_ , come to see _him_ , and even at the age of five, Ben Solo was just beginning to exercise that invisible muscle, extremely perceptive for a child, his force-sensitivity just beginning to manifest. 

His room always felt severed from the rest of the house. It always felt unbalanced, like a black hole in space. Something felt off, though he could never really put his finger on it. 

He climbed back into his bed with his face shoved into the pillow, pretending he was in the cockpit of an X-wing, flying with the Blue Squadron. He pretended he was anywhere but here. 

Vader. The name stuck with him. It needled at him. He knew it had something to do with the strange silences his mother sometimes fell into. The darkness surounding that name fell over the house like a cloud. Unacknowledged, but always _there_. Lying in his bed with the sheets pulled over his head, he spoke the name aloud, just to taste it on his tongue. 

_“Vader.”_

He stopped running to his mother’s arms every time he had a silly bad dream. He was too old for that, anyway. There was nothing to be afraid of. 

_See?_ Han boasted. _I told you he’d grow out of it._

There was nothing to be afraid of. There weren’t any monsters in his closet. 

Except there actually _was_ a monster in his closet. It had taken him thirty years to finally kill it. 

He’d feared it, until it told him he needn’t be afraid. He’d reached out to it with all the naive, clumsy eagerness of a child reaching for candy offered by a stranger. It reached back. It knew his name. It knew all the fears and secret desires of his heart. He’d grown to trust it, to love it, even. 

At the age of five, six, seven, he saw things that weren’t there, heard voices only he could hear. He lost hours of sleep to shadows standing over his bed and strange whispers in his Sometimes he dreamt of blood that got on his hands and in his mouth and eyes and nose. He felt cold, long-fingered hands tugging at him. He wandered dark, empty corridors that always led to a big, red room with curtains set on fire. He dreamt of a snowy forest and a sword made of red light. 

Dark circles appeared under his eyes. He curled up in random places around the house during the day, where the nighttime monsters couldn’t reach him, curled up in a pile of laundry or under his mother’s bed or a warm spot behind the cooling unit. The pediatrician prescribed sleeping pills for him, but they just made the nightmares worse, locking him in the shadow world that infected his sleep. When he took the pills, the voices in his head always seemed to linger a little longer. 

_What wrong, sweetheart?_

In the memory, he hears his child self tell her about the shadows that plagued him every night, with the only descriptive capabilities he had in his arsenal at the age of five. 

_I saw the shadow man again._

He remembers the color going from his mother’s face. He remembers a shadow of fear. It had only lived in her face for a second, before she built up her walls, papering everything over with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. 

_It was just a bad dream._

_It wasn’t!_

_Well, whatever it was, it’s gone now._

_I’m scared._

_I know what’ll make you feel better. Why don’t you read me a story._

_I’m too old for stories!_

_Too old? Force, where’d you get that idea?_

_Poe said—_

_Nevermind what Poe said, listen to what I’m saying. You’re never too old for stories. I love stories. And I’m_ really _old._

_How old?_

_A thousand years old._

In his mind’s eye, he sees his mother pulling his datapad onto her lap, a wry smile on her face. He’d never realized how young she was. 

_Let’s read_ Journey to the Western Reach _. I love that one._

_Okay. But only if you do the voices._

_Deal._

In the memory, he curls up next to her with his tiny, bare feet tucked in the crook of her elbow, fiddling with a lock of her hair that had fallen out of her intricate braids. She begins to read, and he stifles a yawn, pretending he’s not tired. 

_There’s too much Vader in him._

He would’ve been able to live with those shadows in his closet, except that he couldn’t bear to see the sadness pulling at the corners of his mother’s face. He couldn’t get the haunted look in her eyes out of his head. He learned to lie. He told her he’d stopped seeing shadows, stopped hearing voices in his head. 

He never knocked on their door again.

_There’s too much Vader in him._

Leia had been the first person to look at him with fear in her eyes. The first of countless others, over the years, until it became normal. Until its sharp edge smoothed like a pebble under his foot. Until he began to crave it, sought to elicit it in the eyes of his enemies.

Rey was the only person who didn’t look at him like that. In that courtroom, though, it had finally happened. He’d finally seen that dreaded look pinch her face in awful ways, and now he’s breaking. Coming undone. There’s no taking back the things he’s done. There’s no bringing back the people he’d slaughtered. There is nothing he can do or say to change things, but some twisted part of him had hoped that she could forgive him. 

Ben collapses on the floor, unable to keep the tears at bay any longer. It all breaks over his head like a wave, stealing the breath from his lungs. His floodgates are open, his walls are crumbling. He’d lost her. Like all the rest, he’d lost her. He tried to protect her from his himself and he’d failed. Just like he couldn't protect his parents. 

He weeps, and the sobs scald his throat as everything comes pouring out into the open. The world comes to a shuddering standstill. He clamps his hands over his ears to drown out the voices, but they’re screaming in his ears. 

There’s no telling how long he crouches on the floor, chest splintering like glass, opening every scab, before the door to his cell opens and then Rey is there, kneeling before him. She reaches out to touch him but he slaps her hand away. 

“Go,” he begs. _“Leave me alone!”_

Instead, she wraps her arms around him. He tries to push her away, but the attempt is half-hearted. The minute she pulls him to her chest, he melts. He pours himself into her arms, heaving a sob. 

He is starving. It has been so long since he has been touched so openly by another. It’s almost too much. He clings to her. She anchors him in the storm. She holds his broken pieces together, keeping him from shattering completely. He presses his face to her chest, listening to the steady beat of her heart. 

He knows then that he had nothing to worry about. 

Maybe he’ll never make it out of this storm, but she’ll be there to weather it with him. She is his and he is hers and that is all that matters. 

Rey takes his hands, leading him to his cot, where she pulls him down on the thin mattress with her. She opens her arms, and he crawls into them, laying his head on her chest and wrapping his arms around her slim frame. Her hands comb through his hair. 

“I’m not afraid of you,” she whispers, brushing a dark lock out of his eyes. “You understand that, don’t you?” .

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says, feeling childish. “I’ve got so much blood on my hands, Rey.” His voice cracks, shatters. “Don’t let me hurt you . . . our child . . . don’t let me hurt you . . . like . . like I hurt them.” 

“You can’t hurt me,” she soothes. “You’re stupider than I thought If you think I fear your darkness, Ben. It’s who you are. It’s who I am.” She presses a kiss to his lips, tastes the salt of his tears. “The dark side is in our nature.” 

Her touch soothes away the last, sharp splinters of glass in his chest. He holds her, grounding himself in her light, her scent. Wildflowers and sun and sand. 

“I can be your home,” she whispers. She cups his cheek. “I want to help you. Tell me how.” 

He covers her hand with his own, leaning into her touch. 

“Be with me,” he says. “Promise me, Rey.” He takes her face in his hands. “Promise me, you’ll stay.” 

Rey presses a kiss to his lips. When she pulls away, her eyes are full of tears. 

“Through a thousand lifetimes,” she says fiercely, “across all possible worlds.” 

He didn’t always dream about shadows and blood rain and throne room. Sometimes he dreamt of scratch marks on durasteel. Sometimes he dreamt of an ocean. 

Most of all, he dreamt of a girl. 

  
  


* * *

Rey stands at the foot of the _Falcon’s_ boarding ramp with Ben by her side. She bids goodbye to Poe and Chewie and Rose. They tell her to keep in touch, they’ll see her soon. Sooner than she thinks. She hugs each of them in turn, choking back tears, trying to find the right words. She wants to tell them that she loves them, even though love is such a fickle, funny, flighty word. They’d been through hell and back, and the only reason she’s still standing here, breathing air, is because of them. They had each other’s back. They trusted her even when she didn’t trust herself, and she’ll never stop owing them. 

She turns to Finn. She’s been dreading this particular goodbye most of all. His arms go around her, and she rests her chin on his shoulder, holding him tight, dreading the moment she’ll have to let go. 

“Finn . . .” she starts, trying to make the words come. 

“I know,” is all he says. It’s all he needs to say. 

She gives his hand one last, parting squeeze and turns away from his kind face, trying not to think about the tears shining in his eyes.

This isn’t goodbye forever. It doesn’t make it any less difficult. 

Rey turns to Ben. He offers his hand. She takes it. 

They board the Falcon together. Rey watches him closely as he sidles into the cockpit. He pauses, head bowed, gripping the back of the pilot’s chair with bloodless fingers. 

Rey mutters something about double-checking the motivator and scurries from the room, leaving him to be alone with his ghosts. When she returns, he’s sitting in the pilot’s chair, fingers moving deftly over the console, conducting a system check and firing up the engine. She settles into the co-pilot’s seat, sneaking a sideways glance at him. He looks so natural sitting there, in the pilots seat, easing the Falcon into the sky. His eyes are bright, with none of their usual shadows. He looks . . . happy.

Kashyyyk shrinks outside the viewport as they exit atmo, and then they’re crawling along a diamond-studded sky. Rey watches a purple-streaked nebula outside the window. A star nursery. It’s breathtaking. Rey chases a breath, letting all that endless space fill up every empty spot inside her, letting it buoy her into an ecstasy. 

They can go anywhere. There’s nothing to go back to, nothing to wait for, just her and him and the entire galaxy under their fingertips. 

She feels eyes on her and catches Ben watching her. She closes his fingers over the dice, covering his hand with her own. She seals his lips to his, and when they break apart, she’s grinning. She pulls up the star map and starts flicking through the multi-colored lights that mark all the different systems. She never lets go of his hand. 

“Where to, Captain Solo?” 


	37. The Padawan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope y'all enjoy the fluff! Maybe go see a dentist after this???

_35 ABY, 4 standard months later._

Rey’s pace quickens as she pushes through the crowded, carefully-tailored street toward the casino. She reaches for Ben’s hand. He slips his fingers wordlessly in the spaces between her own, and she gives it a squeeze. 

_Almost there._

They weave through the crowded street-corners, passing lavish storefronts and busy restaurants with their windows flung wide open on this, an unusually cool afternoon on the desert planet Cantonica. She can hear the distant echoes of laughter and the clinking of silverware on plates. A pleasant breeze stirs the loose strands of hair around her face. Despite this, she’s still sweating and red-faced, irritated beyond good reason. 

She watches a wizened old man wearing pristine, white gloves and a suit that probably costs more than her entire life earnings put together walk a strange little animal on a leash studded with jewels. It’s unbelievably ugly, with a long snout like a rodent and bald, spotted skin. Tufts of coarse, red fur, the only hair on its body, pokes out of its ears. Rey wrinkles her nose in distaste as it squats and shits in a well-manicured bush laden with purple flowers, one of many identical to it, lining the street. 

She hates this city and all the people in it. She hates their apathy and their affluence and their over-indulgence. 

Rey pauses in the shade of an awning, tugging at the damp clothes sticking to the tight drum of her swollen belly, riding up slightly to expose a strip of tanned skin along on her waistline. 

Ben’s eyes rest on her face. His Adam's apple bobs as he swallows, watching her concernedly as she wipes the sweat from her brow, cybernetics flashing in the sun. She kneads at the small of her back, wincing. 

He knows it’s all part of the usual aches and pains, but it doesn’t make it any easier for him to let her carry on like this, huffing and puffing as she follows him up the street, trying to match his long-legged stride. He’d argued and fought with her on endless occasions, but she’d insisted on coming, gods be damned if she let the pregnancy slow her down. 

Ben rubs a hand over the stubble on his jaw, a flicker of amusement pulling the corners of his mouth and eyes. Stubborn. Too stubborn. 

Rey catches him watching her and shoots him the death glare to trump all death glares, daring him to say something. 

_Go ahead, Solo. Open that big, stupid mouth. See what happens._

He knew better. 

“Let’s stop and sit down,” he says, catching her wrist. She wrenches from his grasp. 

“I’m fine.” she says, entirely unconvincingly. She reaches back to re-pin a few stray chestnut locks out of her face. “Let’s go. The sooner we do this, the sooner it’s done. The sooner we can go home.” 

He sidles up to her, pulling her close, inhaling the scent of her, that coconut shampoo she uses cutting through the sweat and grit and engine fuel. He presses a kiss to the corner of her mouth. 

“Are you sure? I’ll buy you something to drink.” 

“Can it, laser brain,” she huffs, wrestling out of his grip. She starts up the street, walking briskly, not pausing to check if he's still following her. 

_Why does he even bother?_

He trails after her, amusement winning over annoyance as he watches her belly sway, holding her bottom lip in her teeth, gray robes flapping in the breeze.

Passersby eye them as they pass with mild curiosity. Dressed in robes befitting Jedi, they’re easy to spot in a crowd. Even in one of the most affluent corners of the Outer Rim, there’s still the threat of trouble. His eyes sweep the street, alert to anything or anyone that might give them trouble.

He gives Rey a wide berth. He never runs out of new and creative ways to piss her off, and lately the sound of his breathing is enough to make her threaten to stab him with a fork. 

Rey marches on, taking a left, then a right, Her eyes trace the ornate buildings, the shiny hulls of the luxury yachts glinting in the sun overhead, her distaste of the gratuitous extravagance not quite masking her fascination. 

She pauses to let him catch up. He jogs to her side, 

“He’s close,” she tells him, pointing up the street. “That way.” 

Ben takes Rey’s hand. 

“Let’s bring him home.” 

* * *

Rey and Ben stand in silence in the center of the fathier stables, breathing in the distinctly animal smell of hay and manure. The fathiers poke their heads over the tops of the stall doors, watching the newcomers warily, scenting the air. Rey feels a grin spread across her face. She’d heard Rose talk about them on occasion, but nothing could’ve prepared her for their size, standing at three meters tall, lithe bodies rippling with sinewy muscle. They blink their doe eyes at Rey with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension. Rey uses the Force to settle the energy in the room, soothing their apprehension and acclimatizing them to her presence. 

The door to their left opens, and Rey whips around, fingers poised at her belt. A small, thin boy with dark hair, dressed in clothes tattered and worn, appears in the doorway with a pail of water to fill the fathiers’ troughs. His eyes widen as he glimpses the pair of robed figures standing in the motes of sunlight filtering through the grimy skylight. 

“Hello,” Rey says, tentatively. She kneels, bringing herself eye-level with the boy. She smiles. “My name is Rey, and this is Ben.” Ben inclines his head, offering a brief smile. “What’s your name?” 

The boy’s brow furrows. He doesn’t speak.

“It’s alright,” Rey encourages, softly. She holds out her hand. His eyes flit to her outstretched fingers, then to her face, unsure. 

His eyes have a dull, faraway look about them. Rey’s breath gets tangled in her throat. She recognizes that look. She’d seen it in the people of Niima, gaunt and run-down from the days that blurred together, their hands blistering from over-work, barely scraping by. She’s known that look all her life. She could be nine again, peering at her distorted reflection in the cracked viewports of crashed shuttles that sometimes turned up in the Goazon Badlands. 

Rey feels herself melting, sinking through the floor, a fierce protectiveness washing over her. 

“We’ve come to talk to you, if that’s alright. I think you might be able to help us with something.” 

The boy watches her carefully, and she can tell he’s warring with himself, whether to call security or hear what she has to say. 

_Please,_ Rey thinks, pushing the entreaty over the Force, toward the boy. His brow quirks. _We won’t hurt you. I promise._

“Temiri,” he says, in a small voice. His eyes find the floor. He nudges a pebble with his toe. “Temiri Blagg.” 

“It’s very good to meet you, Temiri.” 

Again, Rey offers her hand, and he clasps it. The Force ripples from the contact points of their fingers. It hums, begins to sing. Ben shifts his weight beside her, and she knows he feels it, too. It confirms her suspicions. 

Rey struggles to her feet, hand cupping her enormous belly. She approaches one of the fathiers, holding out her hand. It sniffs her warily, and Rey smiles at the hot breath tickling her palm. 

“Wonderful creatures, aren’t they?” she asks. Temiri nods. 

“Does Bargwill Tomder treat you well?" 

His eyes darken. He shakes his head. 

"Does he ever hurt you?" 

"Sometimes," the boy admits, in a small voice. 

“I'm sorry to hear that,” she says. "I was just like you when I was your age. I’m from Jakku. Do you know where that is?” 

Temiri shakes his head no. 

“Well, it’s a desert planet in the Western Reaches. I worked for a crolute named Unkar Plutt. He was a bad man. He treated me poorly. He used me for my labor.” She feels Ben’s muscles tighten, feels his fingers curling into fists. She puts a hand on his arm, and he relaxes under her touch. “But I got out. I got a chance to start a better life, with people who love me.” 

She strokes a hand over the coarse fur on the fathier’s broad neck, turning back to the boy. 

“Temiri, I came all the way across the galaxy to find you. Do you know why that is?” 

He shakes his head. 

“Because I think you’re special. I think there’s something inside you that’s also inside me. I think you can do things that other people can’t. Things you can’t explain. Do you know what I’m talking about?” 

_Yes_. The word is small, whispered, but it’s there and she hears it in her mind as clearly as if he’d spoken it aloud. 

"You feel things that other people can't. Don't you?" 

He nods. 

Rey cocks her head, studying him. 

_Can you hear me?_

_Yes._

She returns to where he is standing and takes his hand, again.

“I think you’re Force-sensitive.” 

He blinks those big honeyed eyes at her and gives her hand a small, almost imperceptible squeeze. 

“I’m like you,” Rey says. “Something came awake inside me. I’m aware of the energy that moves through everything. Does that make sense? It’s like having another sense.” 

Temiri nods. 

“So, Temiri, that means you’ve got a decision to make. Ben and I are starting a temple, to train Force-sensitives. Think of it like a school, where you can learn to recognize your power and control it.” 

“Are you Jedi?” he asked, awed. “I thought they were legends.” 

Rey glances at Ben, a wry smile playing on her lips. “Something like that."

“And you want me to go with you?” Temiri asks. 

Ben nods. 

“Yes, but it’s your choice. I know it’s a big decision.” He kneels beside Temiri, grasping the boy’s shoulder. “I think there’s something special about you, Temiri. I wouldn’t want that potential to go to waste.” 

“It’ll be a chance to start a new life,” Rey adds. “One far away from here.” 

“What about Tomder?” 

“Don’t worry about him,” Ben says, glancing at Rey, whose cheeks pink, thinking about the unconscious cloddogran they’d shoved in a supply closet not ten minutes ago. “He won’t be bothering us.” 

For a moment, Temiri’s eyes light with hope, but then his face falls. 

“But . . . my friends . . . I can’t leave my friends. They work for Tomder, too.” 

Rey looks at Ben, a ghost of a smile playing on her lips. 

“Don’t worry,” she says, “there might be something we can do.” 

* * *

Rey and Ben board the _Falcon_ with three children in tow, two more than expected, but nothing they aren’t prepared to handle. Arashell and Oniho. Arashell is quiet and shy, and Oniho doesn’t stop asking questions the entire trip from the racetracks to Hangar 7, on the east side of town.

Ben makes his way to the cockpit while Rey helps the children strap in. She shows them the dejarik table and tells them to stay out of trouble, then waddles down the hall to find Ben. 

“How’s she looking?” she asks, bending over to plant a kiss to Ben’s cheek. He smiles that sly, half-smile that makes her want to smack him and/or start taking off her clothes. 

“Never better.” 

“Good. That damned motivator better hold. I’ve wasted too many hours of my life slaving away over that thing.” 

“You did a good job, sweetheart,” Ben says, soothingly. 

Rey easing into her chair, which barely contains her current, planetary state. She groans, rubbing a hand over her belly. Ben looks at her, trying and failing to hide his worry. 

“Stop looking at me like that, Benjamin, I’m perfectly fine.” She pushes her sweat-dampened hair back from her face, blowing out a huffy sigh. “I need to pee.”

“You always need to pee.” 

“Yeah, that tends to happen when an actual human being is pushing on all your organs.” She shifts uncomfortably in her chair. 

“If I could switch places with you, love, I would.” 

Rey grimaces, smoothing a hand over her belly. 

“I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. I didn’t sleep a wink last night. He wouldn’t stop kicking me.” 

Ben eases the Falcon into the air. 

Temiri appears in the doorway of the

“What’re you doing?” Rey yelps, shooing him away. “Strap in, we’re about to make the jump.” 

“This is the Millenium Falcon!” he blurts, gawking at her. “This is the ship that made the Kessel Run in fourteen parsecs!” 

_“Twelve!”_ Ben grumbles, without looking up from the star map he’s poring over. Rey grins. 

“It’s okay, kid,” she says, clapping Temiri’s shoulder. “You only make that mistake once.” 

Ben rolls his eyes, still muttering under his breath. 

“Fourteen . . . 

* * *

Rey stands on the balcony overlooking the temple’s ruins, listening to the summer breeze flirting with the whimsical, glass chimes that hang from the awning. She fiddles with a thread in the gauzy sleep shift she wears, standing barefoot and rocking backward and forward on her tiptoes.

Night is falling on Ashas Ree, and night creatures are beginning to stir. A particularly enthusiastic parvinoth chirps from a nearby bush, calling for a mate. His call joins the tinkling of the wind chimes in a chorus of sleepy, summer sounds. She watches a swarm of the insects disperse into the night sky, glowing with bioluminescence. She could almost mistake them for the tiny pinpricks of light from the trading post, just a few klicks south of the temple. It is the only other inhabited landmark on a planet mostly consumed by green—with an abundance of jungle and forest, and no shortage of exotic species of frogs, insects and birds, it is teeming with life. The days are long and the nights are short, here on Ashas Ree, in the dead of the infinite, summer months which bring balmy, mild weather and plenty of sunlight. Deep, clear rivers wind through the forests, and a large, saltwater lake abound with brightly colored fish stands right outside their backyard. 

She and Ben had sought out a place like this for two months, traveling between the Outer Rim territories in search of a place to settle. The moment they’d stepped on Ashas Ree’s lush, dark soil, she’d known. Easily defendable, abundant with life and near enough to the trading post to avoid feeling completely isolated from the rest of the galaxy, it fit the bill. Ashas Ree had been affiliated with both Sith and Jedi activity before it fell into disrepair, and the metaphor wasn’t lost on Rey. She’d read the flesh memories and the ancient rhymes inscribed in the ruins and knew why they’d stumbled upon this particular site, for what better place for two, gray Jedi to build their temple than from the ashes of both the light and dark sides of the Force? 

They’d settled here, erected a modest little settlement on a hill overlooking the temple’s ruins, and set to carving a new life on Ashas Ree. Each day, more shadows had gone from Ben’s eyes, and each day their scars faded a little more. 

Rey watches a ship rise in the atmosphere and enter hyperspace, jetting through the night sky in a streak of blue light. It occurs to her what’s missing, as she looks up at the sky quickly fading from orange to gray to purple, eyes filled with so much stardust. The ships leaving and arriving and streaking across the night sky no longer contain phantom versions of her parents, and she is no longer waiting. 

She’s home. The one she’d waited for had come back to her, and he’d stayed, and she can hear him rummaging through the cupboards in the kitchen, trying to help what can’t be helped: her disastrous cooking. 

She surveys the night with a hand pressed to the kyber crystals she wears around her neck, watching the bio-luminescent parvinoth swarms. She recedes into the house, trailing down the stairs on silent feet and going into the kitchen. 

Their house is modest, two stories, four bedrooms, and a basement that serves as her makeshift work space, where she tinkers with droids and broken things.

 _“Once a scavenger, always a scavenger,”_ Ben teases. Rey just rolls her eyes.

They’ve made this place their own over the past few weeks. Rey’s got a collection of exotic plants in every nook and cranny of the house, souvenirs from trips off world. She tends to her garden with great care, having always had fondness for green things. They sprout flowers, fangs, tentacles, thorns . . . everything you can imagine, and then some. As she wanders down the hall, she spots Ben’s calligraphy set and parchment strewn about the desktop in the master bedroom, and it makes her so goddamn happy, almost as happy as it makes her to see his toothbrush next to hers in the bathroom, that he’d chosen to build a home with her. So happy she can’t contain it within her borders, so she takes the steps two at a time, rushing into the kitchen to find him. 

He’s bent over the stove, trying to turn her dumpster-fire creation into something halfway presentable. An impossible feat, but she commends him for trying. 

She throws her arms around his waist, pressing her face into the broad expanse of his shoulders. She breathes that familiar scent, mingled with the nip of after-shave and the lingering scent of whatever spice he’s using. 

He turns, pressing a kiss to the tip of her nose. She reaches around him, snagging a jam-filled pastry off the tray he’d set out. 

“Were have you been?” he asks. 

She shrugs. 

“Balcony,” she mutters, around a mouthful of dough. Ben dabs at a bit of powdered sugar on her face with his finger and licks it off. 

“How’s Eetee?” he asks, referencing the old service droid, ET-47, she’d salvaged from the fighting pits on Corellia. She’d been tinkering with the droid ever since, with little success. 

“She fried another chip. Something’s not right with the diagnostic unit. It keeps shorting out.” Rey says, with a frown. 

Ben fiddles with the ends of her hair, which falls loosely over her shoulders. 

“You’ll figure it out. You always do.” 

“I hope so. It’ll be nice to have Eetee around, once the baby comes. You know, to help with things around the house.” 

“Let’s hope you program all the bugs out of her before then. We don’t want another incident.” 

Oh right, that. Rey bites her lip, thinking of the time she’d gone down to her work station in the basement, only to find Eetee smashing everything in sight with a wrench she’d found lying in Rey’s box of tools. It had taken Rey and Ben’s combined strength to wrestle the wrench out of her grip and force her into a full power-down. Ben had earned a nasty bruising for his trouble. Since then, he hadn’t let her live it down. 

_“Stop talking,”_ she’d snapped, as he sat on the edge of their bed and let her rub a bacta salve over his split lip. _“You’re making it worse.”_

_“It stings!”_

_“It’s just a scratch. Hold still!”_

_“I’m not the one who set a killer droid on the loose!”_

_“Kriff off, Benjamin!”_

“She doesn’t do that anymore. I think I finally repaired all the holes in her programming.” 

“I still wouldn’t trust her around our baby,” Ben says sourly. “Or _any_ baby, for that matter.” 

“I’ll work on it. I pulled her out of the fighting pits, Ben. You can’t blame her for those inclinations—” 

“You’re too soft with droids,” he said. “It’s one of your great mysteries.” 

“They have feelings too!” Rey cries. “I won’t stand by while they’re abused and mistreated, programmed to destroy each other for entertainment. They deserve respect.” 

“Okay, but we’re talking about a hunk of metal, here. You understand that, right?” A crinkle of amusement appears at the corners of his eyes. He’s laughing at her. She takes a swing at him, but he catches her wrist, so easily ensnaring her. 

“C’mon, sweet, lighten up. It’s not like they have souls.” 

“You don’t know that.” 

“I do know that.” 

She wrestles out of his grip. She wants to yell at him, she wants to look tough and menacing. She wants to stay mad at him, but she can’t keep the smile off her face.

“Hey,” he says, framing her face with his hands. His gaze darts to her lips before resting on her eyes. “I love you.” 

“I know.” 

“Say it back,” he demands. He lifts her hand and presses a soft kiss to each, cybernetic fingertip. He starts in on her other hand with an impossibly soft touch. “Say it.” 

“I love you,” she says. She leans forward, and he captures her lips. Just then, the scent of smoke fills her nostrils. She frowns, breaking the kiss. He tries to recapture her lips, but she plants a firm hand on his chest, stopping him. 

“I’ll love you less if you burn the house down.” 

Ben’s eyes widen. He whirls around. 

“Kriff!” he yells, opening the oven to unleash a plume of smoke. “Son of a bantha . . . ” 

Rey doubles over in laughter, clutching her aching sides as she watches Ben scramble for a pair of oven mitts, swearing up a storm as he attempts to extract the second patch of pastries from the flames while D-O, the droid she'd rescued from Ochi's ship and had since inherited from the Resistance after they no longer had a need for him, zooms round and round their feet. 

"D-Dangerous," he trills. "Your oven is on fire." 

"I'm aware," Ben bites out, feigning a kick at the little droid. Rey steps between them and plants a kiss to Ben's cheek. 

Still cackling, she retreats outside, escaping the smoky haze inside the house and fleeing into the dark, moonless night. She wades through the tall grass toward the dormitories, mere yards from the training temple’s entrance. She finds Temiri perched on the windowsill with his legs dangling outside. 

“Tem?” she calls, softly, so as not to startle the boy or wake Arashell or Oniho, asleep in their respective bunks. 

He turns. 

“Master Rey,” he says, with a smile that chases the usual shadows from his face. It had taken him only a short time to warm up to her. He respected Ben, but he adored Rey, so much so that Ben had taken to calling referring to him as her shadow. He was the boldest of the trio, and the only Force-sensitive among them. He's compassionate and oftentimes soft-spoken, though his soft-spokenness didn't necessarily equate timidity. He's committed to his training and determined to prove his worth. Rey gets along well with the boy. She’d begun to teach him to mediate, to recognize the Force and what it showed him, to trust his instincts and to let them guide him. 

The more time she spent with the boy, the more she felt the lines blurring, fighting off surges of protectiveness. She wondered if it was normal to love a student as much as she loved Tem, but she couldn’t help it. She couldn’t help that she saw so much of herself in this boy, always watching the horizon, eagerly trotting after her like a puppy, soaking up every morsel of information she gave him. 

Rey cups a hand under her belly and sits on the edge of the bed. She pats the space next to her and Tem drops from the window with all the nimble stealth of a cat pursuing a mouse. He clambers onto the bed and settles himself, cross-legged, beside her. 

“Can’t sleep?” she asks, recalling the nightmares he sometimes had. The first night had been the worst. She’d woken to distant screaming and rushed to find him tangled in the sheets, clawing at things she couldn’t see. She’d woken him and held him and he’d _sobbed_ , crumbling in her arms. That night, she’d vowed then to protect him like she would her own child. 

“You’re safe. Shhhh, baby, you’re safe,” she’d soothed, sweeping the hair off his forehead. He’d thrown his arms around her, and when the sun rose, Ben had found her curled around his body in a C, keeping vigil, shielding him from the night’s terrors. 

Tem shakes his head. 

“I don’t sleep well, either,” she says. She taps her temple. “I think too much. ” 

“Do you have nightmares?” 

She looks at him, biting her lip. 

“Sometimes.” 

“How do you get rid of them?” 

Rey’s frowns, worrying her lip. She wishes she could tell him that they’ll go away, someday. She wishes she could tell him that time heals. It does, but not as fast as she’d like. She wishes she could brush her fingers over his temples and erase all the bad memories, but she can’t. 

“Meditation helps. Sometimes. Sometimes it doesn’t, so I distract myself. I like fixing things. I like to work with my hands. It clears my head.” 

“When I couldn’t sleep, I usually went to see Delphi, one of the fathiers. She liked me the best.” 

“I bet she misses you.” 

Tem nods, falling silent. For the first time, Rey notices the little tauntaun figure in his hands. He fiddles with the wood carving, lost in thought. 

“Where’d you find that?” 

“In your study,” he says, sheepishly. His cheeks redden. He holds it out to her. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have taken it without asking.” 

Rey folds his fingers over the figure.

“Don’t be silly. I won’t miss it. Take it.” 

“What is it?” 

“It’s a tauntaun. They live on Hoth. Ben made that when he was about your age.” 

“Ben made this?” Tem asks, raising an eyebrow. 

“He did.” 

Tem holds it up for closer inspection. 

“He gave it to his uncle, Luke, and Luke gave it to me.” 

“Where’s his uncle, now?” 

“He died,” Rey says, with a soft smile. “He’s one with the Force, now.” It’s not her place to tell him that Ben’s uncle is Luke Skywalker. That’s Ben’s right, but she knows he’ll find out, sooner or later. 

Rey feels eyes on her and looks up, catching a glimpse of Luke standing by the window, wrapped in soft blue light. Her former master smiles at Tem. 

_You’re doing good, kid,_ he says. _Master Yoda always told me to pass on what I’ve learned. I am sorry I failed to pass my knowledge to you. I’m glad you are doing what I could not._

_I’m trying. It’s not easy._

_It doesn’t get any easier,_ Luke says, with a chuckle. _But that’s the only way we grow. We endure. We learn from our failures. You taught me more than I ever taught you. You set my mind on the right path. I’d been wandering astray for far too long._

_Well, Leia told me you needed some good sense knocked into you. I’m just doing her a favor._

_She’s difficult, my sister._ He winks. _But her heart’s in the right place._

_Give her my love, will you?_

_I will. May the Force be with you, Rey from Nowhere._

With that, he’s gone. Rey comes back to her senses to find Tem’s small hand clutching her own. 

“How did he die?” 

“Who? Luke? He died in the war. He sacrificed his life trying to save someone I love very much.” 

“Who?” 

“Ben. His nephew.” 

“What did Luke try to save him from?” 

“His own darkness.” 

“So it _is_ true that Ben came back from the dark side?” 

Rey nods. 

“He started down the wrong path, but he changed. He had too much heart to commit himself fully to the dark.” 

“He keeps himself hidden. I’ve sensed it. There’s a lot he doesn’t want me to see.” Rey looks at him, cocking an eyebrow. 

"You're quite perceptive, for one so young." She puts an arm around his shoulder. “Give him time. He'll come around." 

Tem is silent, mulling it over. He rubs his thumb over the jagged edges of the tauntaun figure. 

“What if I turn to the dark side?” he says, his voice brittle and trembling. “What if I go bad?” 

Rey looks at him. She wraps an arm around him, pulling him close. 

“It’s always a choice, Tem. It’s never too late to start down the right path. I want you to know that whatever you choose. There’s light and darkness inside each of us. The Jedi wanted to suppress the darkness, just like the Sith wanted to reject the light, but the truth is, we must find balance in ourselves. We cannot deny ourselves love. Love makes us human. Emotion, passion, love, these make us human. Being a Jedi shouldn’t be about denying and suppressing our humanness, it should be about controlling it. It's about tempering those impulses and disciplining yourself. It’s about doing what’s right.” 

“How will I know if I’m doing the right thing?” 

“You must trust yourself. You have decide what you believe. My job is to give you the tools you need to make that decision for yourself.” Rey touches Tem’s cheek. “There is no light without darkness. Instead of rejecting the dark side, we must devote ourselves to keep the balance between both sides. A lot of Jedi missed that, I think, in the height of the Order’s corruption. It led to their downfall.” 

“I thought the Jedi were good.” 

“They were, but they made mistakes. How could they not? They were human, just like you and I. I’m trying not to repeat their mistakes. It’s difficult. I’m only human, but I try. When I make a mistake, I learn from it. It’s the best I can hope for.” She looks at Tem.

“Promise me something,” she says, clasping his hand. “Promise me you understand that no matter what path you choose, you’ll always have a home here.” 

He looks at her, squeezing her hand. 

“I promise.” 

He throws his arms around her, and she hugs him back tightly. 

“You’re going to make mistakes, Tem. You’re going to make a lot of them, and I can’t wait to see the man you’ll become because of it.” She pokes the tip of his nose. He giggles. "Don't you worry yourself over such things, alright?" 

He nods. "Alright."

Rey struggles to her feet. 

“It's time for bed. Try to get some sleep, okay?” 

He shakes his head, stifling a yawn. 

“I’m not tired.” 

Rey plants her hands on her hips. 

“You should rest, Tem. I need you at your best, tomorrow. 

“What’re we doing?” 

Rey smiles, mischievously. 

“It’s a secret.” 

_“Master Rey!”_ he groans. “Tell me!” 

“That would spoil the fun.” 

He groans, rolling his eyes. 

“Well, I won’t be able to sleep until you tell me what it is!” 

Rey cocks an eyebrow. They’re at an impasse. Tem glares at her, folding his arms across his chest with a defiant _harrumph_. 

“Why don’t we read a story?” Rey says, changing the subject. She flicking through her datapad to find something interesting in the archives. 

Tem gives in, crawling under the blankets. She sits on the edge of the bed and begins to read. She isn’t five pages in when Tem’s eyes flutter closed and he begins to snore. She reads until the end of the chapter and then shuts off the light.

“Night, Tem,” she whispers, and slips out the door and onto the lawn, tiptoeing back to the house. 

She finds Ben sprawled on the sofa, transferring popcorn from his bag to his mouth with efficiency. 

“Scoot over,” she says. He makes room for her, and she eases down onto the soft, curved toward his body, using his arm as a pillow. Ben switches off the holodrama he’d been watching and fixes his gaze on her. He tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. 

“Did you get those kids to bed?” 

She nods. 

“Tem’s having trouble sleeping, again,” she tells him. A dark look passes over Ben’s face, mirrored in Rey’s eyes. They of all people know the damage nightmares can do when the old fear crawls a little too close for comfort. Thank the gods they have each other, when the monsters come knocking. When Rey dreams of fallen X-wings and lightning and that bloody Sith dagger, Ben’ arms are there to comfort her. When Ben clenches his fists until his fingernails draw blood, battling the voices in his head, she chases those voices away, reminding him who he is. On those darknes nights, they hold each other until the sun rises. Sometimes they talk, sometimes there’s no need for it. Sometimes silence speaks the loudest. Sometimes it’s just their bodies and their lips and sweat and skin. 

She knows it’s not going to be an easy road. That they cannot escape their past. They cannot erase the scars left by a long and terrible war. The shadows still haunt Ben’s eyes, sometimes. Sometimes he has to break things. Sometimes he punches the wall so hard his hands come away bloody. Sometimes Rey retreats inside herself. Sometimes she forgets to eat. Sometimes she locks herself in the basement, rubbing her fingertips raw trying to coax something useful out of a pile of scraps. But they have each other. They’ll get through this. 

Ben keeps brushing the hair back from her face. 

“It’s going to be difficult to adjust, after a life like that,” Ben says. 

“I know,” she says, thinking of Jakku and the bleach-white sands she sees every time she closes her eyes. She knows better than anyone. 

“Hey,” Ben says, following the progression of her thoughts. He tilts her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes. There's a bone-deep sadness there that she hates, mostly because she knows it's a sadness meant only for her and that wall of tally marks that still haunts him. 

_Do you still count the days?_

“He’ll be alright." 

"I hope so." Rey shivers, and Ben pulls her close, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

“I just spoke with him. He’s afraid of turning to the dark side.” 

“What did you say?” he murmurs, against her hair. 

“I told him it’s all we can do to learn from our mistakes. Worse comes to worst, we’ll catch him when he falls.” She bites her lip. “He’s too young to worry about those things.” 

“Maybe,” Ben says. “It’s not gonna change the fact that he _is_ worrying about those things. All we can do is try to guide him. We can’t change the path laid out for him. Only he can do that. He has to make his own decisions.” 

I love that boy, Ben,” she says fiercely. “I love him like he’s my own.” 

“I know,” Ben says. “I do, too.” 

“We have to protect him. We have to— _oh!”_ Rey exclaims, hand flying to her belly. 

“What is it?” Ben says, eyes widening.

“Relax,” Rey says, laying a hand on his arm. “He just kicked me.”

She eases her shirt up, revealing her belly in all it’s glory, stretch-marks and all. Ben’s fingertips trace the dark line extending from her navel, then presses his palm flat against the curve of her bump.

“I feel him,” he says, with a laugh. “Gods, Rey . . .” he shakes his head, moving his hand. Rey sees the shape of a small foot push against her uterine wall, right against Ben’s hand.

“Hello, little one,” he says. He glances at her. “Is this as embarrassing as I think it is?” 

“No. Keep going.” 

He cocks an eyebrow, looking a little cowed. All the same, he lowers his lips to her skin and keeps speaking, and Rey stifles a giggle as his warm breath tickles her skin. 

"We're very excited to meet you." 

Rey smiles as she feels the baby respond to the sound of his father’s voice with a succession of three, quick jabs. A familiar sound. A safe sound. 

He looks at her, eyes shining, cradling the back of her head and drawing her near, so their foreheads rest together. 

“I love you.” 

“Don’t get all mushy on me, Solo,” she says, badly concealing her tearful smile. “Try sleeping when you’ve got a tiny human doing literal somersaults inside you.” She grimaces. “Trust me, it’s not so special when it’s three in the morning and all you want to do is sleep. I can’t wait to get this thing out of me.” 

“Don’t rush it,” Ben says, “we’ve still got two and half months to go. They’re easy when they’re in the womb.” 

“Easy?” Rey yelps, glaring at him. “Careful, Solo. No uterus, no opinion.” 

“Compared to a screaming infant, I mean,” he says, quickly. “A screaming, crying, pooping infant that wakes us all hours of the night.” 

Rey’s hackles flatten. “You’re right,” she concedes, “I hadn’t thought of that.” 

Ben looks away, chewing his lip thoughtfully. 

“I’m not ready to be a father,” he says, speaking to the room at large and all its shadows. He won’t look at her. “What if I can’t be what you need me to be?” 

“You think _I’m_ ready? Force, Ben, I’m terrified. But we’re gonna figure it out” She seizes his wrist. “Look at me.” He does. “If we screw up, we screw up, but at least we do it together. We’re in this together. Okay?” She takes his face in her hands. “You’re exactly who I need by my side, Ben. No one else.” She leans her forehead against his. “Just you.” 

Ben gazes at her, a soft, easy smile appearing on his face that makes her want to burst into tears. She can remember a time when smiles were few and far between. Now, they grace his features every day, carving new lines in the geography of his face. She likes to put her hands on either side of his face and trace them, feeling the shape of that smile, so sorely won.

“Okay.” 

* * *

Rey can’t sleep. Her mind runs away from her, and Kiran won’t stop tumbling around, kicking and stretching his muscles. Ben’s arm is draped protectively across her chest, and she has a hell of a job extracting herself from him. She pulls on slippers to warm her chilled feet and wanders down the stairs. The sun is beginning to rise, the first, faint streaks of gray dusting the horizon. She pulls a cowl around her shoulders to combat the morning chill hanging over their little house and wanders down the basement, rubbing soothing circles over her belly in hopes of calming the baby down. 

Her workstation is a cluttered mess, per usual, but it’s organized chaos and she picks her way around the heaps of tools, spare parts, and old droids piled a mile high on every available surface with ease. She sits on her workbench and selects a harris wrench from her pile of tools and tugs the nearest crate full of spare parts toward her. A small piece of paper flutters toward the ground. 

Puzzled, Rey reaches to get it. It’s not an easy feat, considering she cannot see her toes. Swearing, she reaches around her big, pregnant belly, panting with the strain, and fishes the paper from the floor. She unfolds it, smiling at the sight of Ben’s careful, calligraphic hand. 

Love notes. Sappy, even for him, but it never fails to tease a smile out of her. She folds it up, tucks it in her pocket, and picks up her harris wrench. 

* * *

Ben finds her asleep with her head on her worktable and creases pressed into her cheek. She jolts awake as his hand falls on her shoulder.

Wordlessly, he scoops her up, slinging her arm over his shoulder and scooping her up. 

“Please tell me you didn’t stay up all night working on this thing,” he says, eyeing the service droid. 

“I stayed up all night,” she admits, sleep dulling the edges of her voice,“and that _thing_ has a name." 

He carries her up the basement steps, through the house, and into their bedroom.

The sun is already high in the sky. The house smells like caf and a little like smoke, the scent lingering from last night's kitchen fire. 

Ben deposits Rey on the bed, and she burrows under the covers. Ben eases into the bed beside her, pulling her to his chest, molding his body to accommodate her bump. They stay like that for a long time as the sun inches higher and the forest outside buzzes with late morning activity. Sunlight falls in large squares over the floor, filtering through the windows. Ben traces absentminded patterns over her belly, and the movement of his fingers lulls her into that warm space between being awake and falling asleep. 

“Rey?” 

“Mmmm?” 

“I thought of a name for the baby.” His fingers work at her hair, threading through her tresses. “I think we should name him Kiran.” 

Rey opens her eyes. She blinks at him through a film of sleep. 

_"What did you say?"_ she hisses, suddenly wide-awake. 

"I think we should name the baby Kiran." 

Rey blinks at him, stunned to silence. 

"Where'd you hear that?" she demands. He shoots her a look of sheer bewilderment. 

"I dunno? I just thought of it." 

"You just . . . thought of it," Rey repeats, slowly.

She hadn't told him of her encounter with their son, preferring to keep that particular anomaly to herself, for reasons even she didn't understand. Here he is, pitching that name to her like it had just fallen into his head. 

"If you don't like it, we don't have to—"

“I like it," Rey says quickly. 

“Yeah?” 

A sly, secret smile creeps onto her face. She grabs his hand and holds fast.

“It’s perfect.” 

"Kiran," Ben says, aloud. "Kiran Solo." 

Rey lays back against his chest. He continues to stroke his fingers through her hair. He presses a kiss to her cheek, muttering something she doesn’t quite catch as she lets sleep carry her away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple notes:  
> First, we are SOO close to the end, 2 chapters left, one of which will be a short epilogue. 
> 
> Secondly, Temiri Blagg is the broom boy from the Last Jedi - The final scene was so hopeful and such high hopes for JJ to incorporate him into TROS in some way, but alas . . . 
> 
> Finally, if y'all were curious about why I chose the name Kiran, (because I did put some thought into it), here you go:  
> Apparently Kiran is a form of the Sanskrit name Kirana, meaning "ray of light" (Rey's character was origninally going to be called Kira in a lot of concept work before they changed it)  
> The spelling Kieran coincidentally is a form of the Gaelic word Ciarán, which means "little dark one," so I thought what better name than something dually meaning both light AND dark for the offspring of our beloved space idiots? I stuck to the former version, Kiran, because of personal preference
> 
> Hope y'all enjoyed. As always, drop a comment and say hello!


	38. The Birth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***warning for descriptions of labor and childbirth ahead!!

Kiran Solo is born at summer’s end, in the darkest part of the night. 

Rey stands at the open window in the early morning, watching the first rays of sunlight brighten and deepen, staining the distant mountains a dusky lilac color. She nurses a mug of caf, eyes moving to rest on the lake’s glittering, jade waters, stirred by the chill breeze that smells of dead and dying things—the first sign of summer’s impending end. She listens to the coming-awake sounds of Ashas Ree’s forests, the insistent ballads of insects and the easy conversation of songbirds. She watches them dart between the branches, leaving brief flashes of red and yellow plumage against the canvas of green, and contemplates heading down to the basement for a few hours of peace before she has to meet Tem. No lessons today; she promised him she’d take him and the others for a swim in the lake.

The first labor pain hits as she’s reaching for the sugar. Rey sucks in a sharp breath as a wave of pressure begins in her lower back and moves to her core as her muscles tighten, then release. She breathes hard through her nose as she waits for the sensation to abate. It passes as quickly as it had come, leaving her short of breath, and with a new fear curling in her heart. She grips the edge of the countertop, standing stock-still in the empty house, as if any sudden moves might bring on a sudden wave. 

All the fears she’s harbored over the past nine months float to the surface again, fears she has tried to her best to shove in a chest and lock away. Those unwelcome doubts which come knocking when her mind is quiet, when the world comes to a standstill, when meditation and all other forms of distraction are meager remedies that don’t quite dull the knife’s edge. What if she can’t protect him? What if she hadn't succeeded in changing destiny's course? What if she leaves him too soon? Who  would protect him, then? What if she cannot be what he needs her to be? A nd among all those bigger questions comes a smaller one that seems to be the needling parasite at the root of all the other. 

_ What if she isn’t ready? _

The baby couldn’t have picked a worse time to arrive. She’s still two weeks out from her due date, the baby’s room isn’t finished, and to top it all off, Ben is offworld, traveling to Chandrila to help Poe with some trouble in the capital. She hadn’t really paid much attention to all the politics, happy to let Ben do all the heavy lifting on that front. She isn't a politician. Her place is here, but Ben, every inch his mother’s son, was as well-versed in diplomacy as he was hell-bent on denying it. She really shouldn’t have been surprised. Considering his upbringing, he really couldn’t have avoided a crash-course on the galaxy’s diverse and intricate political system, steeped in conflict as it was. He'd absorbed it via osmosis . Leia had rubbed off on him in more ways than one. He’d inherited her spark, her quick tongue, even her inclination to the dark, but he also possessed her intuition, her knack for reading a room, her eloquence, her patience, and her wisdom; Rey loved him for each of these things. 

He was Leia’s son. He had his father’s heart but his mother’s mind. He was the Prince of Alderaan, the son of a respected senator among a long succession of politicians and rulers. He’d grown up wholly immersed in that world, a world as foreign to her as it was second nature to him. It had sunk its claws into him. 

When the initial panic passes, Rey takes a shaky breath. She’s being silly. She'd experienced false labor cramps before. She can deal with this. She just has hold out until Ben gets back. She’d gone through hell and all its demons to bring him back; she isn’t about to birth his child without him by her side. She needs his hand to hold. They'd promised each other they’d do this together, and she intends to keep that promise. 

The house feels too big, too cold, without him. She isn't too keen to admit how much she already misses him. 

She moves out of the kitchen and makes her way down the basement steps, gripping the railing with white knuckles, one hand cupping her belly, which re-defined the word  _ enormous.  _ She feels like an old, clunky freighter that can barely be trusted to get itself off the ground. She’s a constipated, aching blob of hormones, stretch-marks, and swollen feet with a bladder more volatile than the  _ Falcon’s _ hyperdrive. She pees when she sneezes. Sleep is an abstract concept. She cries when they run out of yogurt. No one wants this baby out more than she, but she can’t do it without Ben. 

Rey pauses on the bottom step, rubbing a soothing hand over her belly. 

_ Just a little bit longer, sweet,  _ she thinks, and right then, as if the universe is trying to prove her inferiority in nature’s grand scheme, another wave of pain hits her, stronger than the last. She braces against the rail, all breath stolen from her body as she closes her eyes to wait it out. 

_ This isn’t happening, _ she thinks. It’s easier to pretend when her uterus isn’t tightening like a corkscrew, and every instinct she possesses is taunting, in a singsong little voice— _ yes, this is happening.  _

“This isn’t happening,” Rey says aloud to the empty room. Her only audience is Eetee, who’s powered down in the corner, fully functional thanks to Rey’s diligence, fueled by Ben’s disdain for her affection towards beat up old droids and her determination to prove him wrong. And again, that voice trills in her ear. 

_ This  _ is  _ happening.  _

Rey eases onto her workbench with some difficulty and picks up a pilex driver, fiddling with the power cell to a broken-down speeder she’s been trying to bring back to life. Good. A distraction is exactly what she needs. 

She makes some headway into her task, humming a little tune, trying to keep her mind on other things. It works, for a time, until another pain begins low in her back and she is forced to address that word,  _ contraction _ , bolded and dressed all in black in her mind. 

There’s no ignoring it now, and the harder she tries the harder it becomes to deny what is obviously going on in her body. She holds her pilex driver with shaking fingers, drawing an unsteady breath, trying to gather her bearings. She fiddles with the damaged power cell, feeling like a ticking time bomb counting down the seconds to zero. 

_ Fresh air,  _ she thinks.  _ I just need some fresh air.  _ She gets up from her chair (as gracefully as she can at nine months pregnant) and lumbers up the stairs. She stares at the commlink sitting on the countertop. She should call someone. It can’t be good for her to be all alone in the house at a time like this. She can’t call Ben. That’s out of the question. He’s halfway to Chandrila by now and she doesn’t want to needlessly freak him out if this is a false alarm (which, she reminds herself, it most certainly is). Poe and Finn are on Chandrila, Rose is on Kashyyyk and Chewie is working on a freighter in the Core, smuggling across the Perlemian hyperroute along The Slice. The closest settlement is the outpost a few klicks south of here. She’s got acquaintances there, the odd spacer whose ship or droid she’d fixed. She didn’t ask for compensation. Most of them transferred a few cursory credits, while others traded their own services. She’d built up a familiarity with the outpost’s denizens. Worse comes to worst, she’ll call for help. In the meantime, the labor pains she’s feeling are surely nothing and she can go back to business as usual. She hopes. 

Rey waddles out the back door and across the lawn to the dormitories, where she finds Tem and Arashell in a spirited debate over who the strongest Jedi is. Oniho is sprawled on his bunk, watching a holo. 

“Who’s ready for a swim?” she asks, cheerfully enough. Tem’s eyes light up when he sees her. He throws his arms around her waist, and she musses his hair. 

“Let’s go,” she says. She holds out her hand, and Oniho’s reluctantly surrenders his holopad to her possession. She tucks it under her elbow. 

“Let’s not laze around all day, hurry up!”

They do as they’re told. As she follows the troop of children out the door, she feels the telltale sensation of release and pauses in the doorway, stifling a gasp. 

Oniho and Arashell push past Tem, rushing to the water’s edge while he lingers, watching her with concern. 

“Are you alright, Master Rey?” he asks. 

Rey leans against the doorway, on hand braced against her hip, breathing hard through her nose. She meets Tem’s eyes. 

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she says, a little shakily. “You go. I’ll catch up.” 

He jogs after the others, throwing one last, worried glance over his shoulder. She brushes him off with a wave of her hand, forcing her lips into something resembling a smile. 

When Tem is out of sight, she lifts up the hem of the shapeless dress she’s wearing, the only thing that’ll fit her these days, and blows out a breath. 

Rey watches the slow trickle of fluid run down her thigh and hit the floorboards beneath her feet, and that wretched little voice cackles in her ear. 

This is happening. 

* * *

Ben dozes in the pilot’s seat as the blurred wormhole of hyperspace flicks by outside the viewport. Ben jolts awake when the transceiver on the Falcon’s dashboard pings. He sits up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, gazing blearily at the star map. He watches the systems winking by as the Falcon rockets through a hyperlane on its way to the Core. His gaze slides over to the blinking, unopened communiques on his dash. He opens the most recent message, immediately recognizing Poe Dameron’s personal code. He braces himself, blood leaden as he reads through its contents, at first only skimming, before settling back to read it in depth.    
  


The message contains a lengthy itinerary for his stay in the capital, complete with docking instructions and all the usual crap. He’d avoided opening it, dreading the whole thing. He couldn’t think of anything worse than being cooped up in a room with all the crusty politicians who’d tried to murder him not even six months ago, arguing over superfluous little details and agreeing on nothing. Package the whole thing with the usual whispers and dirty looks, a catered luncheon which probably involved a less than adequate array of soggy sandwiches, and some righteous asshole who thought all his trash-chute ideas were the only good ones, tie it up with ribbon and you had a pretty accurate guess at Ben Solo’s personal hell. The mere thought of it puts ice in his veins. 

He wasn’t even technically allowed within a thousand parsecs of the Core, but Poe Dameron had, in his own words, “pulled some strings” to shuttle him to Chandrila. The New Republic was still trying to dismantle the last remnants of the regime he’d formerly governed. As prior Supreme Leader of the First Order, he was a valuable asset. They needed his intelligence. At first, he’d refused. Rey was reluctant to let him go, but he knew this opportunity presented itself as a rare opportunity to improve his image in the eyes of Rey’s friends. He didn’t want to alienate her, and the best way to ensure that didn’t happen was to try and patch things up with them. It was no easy feat. It wouldn’t happen overnight, but agreeing to these kinds of things was as good a start as any. For Rey’s sake, he’d try. 

Ben sighs, pushing back from the control panel. It’s only after he goes to the ‘fresher, makes himself a cup of caf that’s less than decent, and returns to the Falcon’s cockpit that he can begin to gather his bearings. His eyes flick to the golden dice flickering in the blue light of the hyperlane. He nurses his caf, one foot tapping absently on the floor. 

There’s still eight hours to go before he makes it to Chandrila. It’s going to be a long haul. He considers meditating to pass the time. It would help to calm his nerves, but he doesn’t think he could if he wanted to. There are too many things crammed in his brain, demanding his attention. They managed to drag his ass to the capital with the nerve to ask him for help after they’d tried to execute him, and even  _ that  _ particular injustice pales in comparison to the fact that they’d asked him to leave Rey behind, thirty-eight weeks pregnant and ready to pop.

He knows he’s being dramatic. It’s a short trip. Two days , tops, and he’ll be right back where he belongs, watching bad holodramas on the couch with a beer in hand and Rey asleep in the old armchair by the hearth, snoring loud enough to wake the dead. He wouldn’t have it any other way. He just wanted to go home. He hated leaving her all alone when she was so close to her due date. 

He considers comming her, simply just to hear her voice, but decides against it. It’s the middle of the night on Ashas Ree. He doesn’t want to scare her, nor does he want her to think he doesn’t trust that she can handle herself.  _ That  _ couldn’t be farther from the truth. She could kick his ass any day of the week. The more his mind dwells with her, the more his thoughts spiral, the more he starts to play out horrible scenarios in his head. What if she goes into labor and he’s not there? What if something goes wrong? What if?

Ben combs a nervous hand through his hair. 

Gods, he’s not ready for this. 

He thinks of Han, the unshakeable constant, the  _ hero  _ he thought his father was, until he got older and wiser and he realized, though he still loved his father dearly, that he was foolish for putting him on a pedestal. That Han was every inch a deadbeat spacer with a too-big heart and too much of an inclination for women and booze and danger to settle into domestic life. A scoundrel, his mother always said, with a bit of venom and a lot of scrutiny that still didn’t quite manage to mask the fondness in her voice, the spark in her eye, the twitch of her lips into a shadow of a smile she fought so hard to stifle. His parents loved each other. Once. At least, he thought they did.

It took him well into his adult years to realize that the incessant bickering, the nagging and arguing and petty fights were  _ their  _ way of showing affection, that fighting was preferable, because at least it was charted territory. At least it was navigable. At least it was familiar. Sure, maybe their marriage was doomed from the start and maybe it was irrevocably damaged by the time they sent him to train with Luke, but Han fought hard to hold it together for so long. 

His father was flawed, and just a little bit broken. He made mistakes, but in the end, he was human. Ben could forgive him for that. And he knew his father forgave him for his own humanness. That made all the difference.

He doesn’t want to end up like his parents. He never wants their child to sit behind a closed door, listening to him and Rey argue until they forgot what exactly it was they were fighting about in the first place. He never wants to read the disappointment in his son’s eyes when he comes back after seven days when he promised to be back in two, never wants to bring home all sorts of junk to pacify their kid in his absence when it could never really make up for his presence. Han could’ve given him the sun and stars and it would’ve paled in comparison to having his dad around more than a couple times a month. 

He never wants to read the lines in Rey’s face, the shadows that tell him he’s gone too often, returned too late. Even when Han was home, he was always distant, always far away, always inside himself. He doesn’t want to end up like that

He doesn’t want to leave Rey in the frigidity of an empty bed. He never wanted to leave with a bitter taste on her tongue. He never wanted to go to bed angry. Not again. Not after he’d seen what it did to her when he left. 

There’s an ache in his chest that threatens to shatter him. He runs a nervous hand through his obsidian locks, leaning back in his chair and gazing unseeingly at the blinking lights on the console over tented fingers. 

He’d never had the example of a happy little family surrounding the nucleus of a happy marriage. He just hopes he can stop history from repeating himself. He and Rey have their moments, of course. Both of them were hot-headed and quick-tempered, swift to use their tongues without considering the consequences. Each of them had landed blows that hit where it hurt. But they could forgive each other. They always hastened to patch things up. They apologized where it counted, and the briefest touch of a hand was always enough. It always spoke louder than words ever could. They always moved as one unit, solidifying their defenses against the world and it’s terrors. They weathered the storm together. 

They knew loneliness too well, enough to recognize it in each other and enough to never want the other to suffer even another minute of it. When they were together they no longer knew loneliness so intimately, and he thinks that is the most that anyone can hope for. 

He knew she loved him and he knew,  _ gods  _ he knew he loved her more than he could contain in his whole self. He’d set fire to himself to warm her. He’d lay whole worlds to waste to protect her. 

They were made of the same star stuff, she and him. He just hoped that star burned bright enough to last through this lifetime, and into the next. 

Ben fingers the arm of his chair absently, tracing the crude letters scratched into the worn material. The name he’d carved into the synthleather years ago. 

Ben Solo. 

Gods, Han had been so mad when he’d found out. 

He swallows the lump in his throat, rubbing his eyes, treacherously wet as they are. He feels eyes on him and turns his head in time to see the ghost of his father, leaning against the wall with that insufferable half smile on his face, before he winks out of sight. 

Ben draws a shuddering breath. There’s no shortage of ghosts hanging around the halls and compartments of this damned ship. He’d learned that the hard way. 

He reaches over the main console and checks the fuel reserves, chewing on the inside of his cheek. He stops only when the metallic taste of blood fills his mouth. He swallows a god of pink saliva with a grimace, eyes lingering on the tunneling smear of blue outside the viewport. 

That’s when he feels the tug in his belly, like he’s caught in a free-fall. Something catches in his chest and starts to splinter. His vision tunnels, dims. He fingers curl into fists as the cold grip of panic seals itself around his organs. 

Something is wrong. 

* * *

Rey sits on a large, flat rock by the lakeside with her feet dangling off the edge, it’s marbled surface warmed by the sun. Her fingers brush the surface as she inspects the flecks of emerald and rose quartz reflecting the sun. She watches Tem, Arashell and Oniho splashing in the water out of her peripheral vision, her feet dangling over the edge, toes skimming the jade waters. 

Oniho is cautious; he doesn’t submerge more than the tops of his knees in the water, preferring to pace the shoreline, digging up snails and other creatures along the muddy bank. Arashell, on the other hand, is completely at home in the water. Hailing from a small fishing village on the planet Voss, where she was separated from her family in an uprising against the First Order and kidnapped by slavers, she looks like some strange sea creatures as she dives under the surface, cutting through the water with ease, reddish hair billowing behind her as she dives to its depths. Tem floats on his back, gazing up at the branches that hang over the water, shading the surface. Rey watches the schools of brightly colored fish scatter as he flips over and dives under the surface, startled by the sudden disturbance. She watches their scales catch the light through water so clear she can see all the way to the grassy bottom. 

She grits her teeth, body tensing as she another contraction begins. It lasts longer than the others, and so intense all breath leaves her lungs. Tears prick her eyes as a new wave of panic settles in. It ebbs and gives way to a heavier dread. All morning, she’d been fairly successful at weathering the labor pains, which had been hitting her sporadically. They were mild, relatively speaking, and their irregularity comforted her. The past hour, they’d stopped altogether. She barely dared to breathe, barely dared to hope that they’d finally subsided, that she could hold out long enough for Ben to make it home. As the minutes ticked on, and there had been no more pains, she’d finally allowed herself to breathe. She’d tasted the sweetness of relief. A false alarm, nothing more. Maybe she could actually let herself enjoy the rest of the afternoon with Tem and the others. Maybe she could bring this baby into the world with Ben holding her hand. 

She was wrong. It hits with renewed strength, and finally,  _ finally  _ the warning bells go off in her head. Her mind, sharp-edged now more than ever, thrown into overdrive as pain like she’s never felt tightens in her back and abdomen as all the muscles contract, and finally she registers the reality of the situation, and it’s enormity. This baby is coming. She doesn’t have a choice in the matter. With or without Ben, she’s going to deliver this baby. Today. 

She’s inching closer toward the edge, and for the first time, the fear of going through this without Ben and the terrifying prospect of bringing a tiny, helpless infant into the world is overshadowed by excitement. To finally be able to gaze on his face, to hold him in her arms and kiss his tiny head, to see those big brown eyes gaze up at her, so much like his father’s, it overpowers every shadow of doubt in her mind. 

Even now, she can feel his presence in the Force, inextricably linked to her. She brushes against that bright star, trying to convey as much comfort and love as she can through the bond they shared. 

_ It’ll be okay, sweetheart, _ she tells him.  _ We’re gonna do this together. We’re gonna be alright.  _

She feels a little hand prodding against her uterine wall, feels him reach for her, in the Force, and knows it’s the truth. 

They’re gonna be alright. 

She banishes all the fear from her mind, pulling strength from the very depths of herself. She needs to be strong. It wouldn’t do her any good to let panic overcome her. She needs to clear her head. She needs to listen to the signals her body is giving her. She needs to focus on what she’s feeling, what feels right, what feels natural, so she can deliver this baby with minimal complications. 

With renewed confidence, Rey opens herself to the Force, amplifying her senses and turning them inward, letting instinct guide her.

She lets Tem, Oniho and Arashell play a while longer. The sun continues to make its ascent, warming Rey’s skin. A breeze stirs her loose tresses. She closes her eyes, turning her face toward the sun and gauging the spaces between breathing, taking in air as slowly and deeply as she can. She slips into a kind of meditative trance. She can still hear Oniho’s cry of protest as Arashell splashes him, still hears the birds and insects and the distant splash as a fish’s fin breaks the surface, but everything is watered-down and distant, and the center of the universe is her body and her mind, her breathing, the sensations flooding her, though not overwhelmingly so. 

After fifteen minutes or so, another contraction hits. This time, she remembers to breathe through it. It’s a little easier. Not much, but enough. She focuses on the way it moves from her back, rises, crests, and falls. Like a wave. 

The mediation helps. A sudden calm fills her. She feels like she’s outside of her body, observing from afar.  _ Luke would be proud, _ she thinks. 

_ You must find the center of the world inside yourself,  _ he’d say, a little cryptic, maybe. A little pretentious. But he always got his point across in the end.  _ You must anchor yourself in the storm. You must not let the wind and sea touch you. If you succumb to your impulses, if you let the tides pull you out, then you submit to your fear, and fear is the path to the dark side.  _

Rey rests a hand on her belly, opening her eyes as the pain subsides. She slides off the rock where she’d perched and stretches her arms above her head. She squints in the sunlight, a little lightheaded and sticky with sweat on this, a particularly hot afternoon in late summer. 

As the sun sinks to its knees, she calls the children. It’s time to go. 

They follow her back to the dormitory, and she leaves them to their devices, heading to the house.

She pauses in the doorway, gripping the door frame as another wave breaks over her head. 

_ Breathe, _ she reminds herself.  _ Breathe. _ She aches for Finn or Rose or even Poe, but they’re star systems away. Mostly, she aches for Ben. 

That contraction had come barely ten minutes on the heels of the last. Her time is running out. 

When it’s over, she sidles into the living room, trying to catch her breath. That’s when she sees him standing in the living room. Her mind goes blank as it registers in her mind, doing a literal double-take. The Force hadn’t connected them in several months. Not like this, across parsecs of space. It hadn’t needed to. They’d been practically sealed at the hip ever since their departure from Kashyyyk, leaving no room for encounters like this. It's a bit of a shock to see him standing in the middle of their living room when he should be halfway to Chandrila by now. 

“Ben?” 

He catches sight of her and his face, tense and full of shadows, softens by several degrees. He crosses the room in two, easy strides and seizes her shoulders, lowering his mouth to seal his mouth to hers. It’s an aggressive kiss. There’s fire behind it that she’s not prepared for, accompanied by a swell of protectiveness. He’s guarded, though, and she knows it’s got to do with the tides of fear pulling at his frayed edges, threatening to undo him. He keeps the fear at bay, knowing he must be strong. For her sake. 

_ “Cyare,” _ she whimpers, as he wraps her in his arms, holding her against the wall of his body, so strong and unshakeable, effectively imprisoning her. He anchors her, builds walls around her to keep out the storm. When he pulls away, she’s crying. She doesn’t even know why. 

“I’m coming,” he tells her, tucking a strand of hair behind her ears as she tries to stifle her tears. “I changed course when I realized. I’ll be there in three hours.” A half-smile unfolds on his lips, and it makes her knees turn to jelly. “Talk about bad timing, huh?”

Rey laughs. It’s not the pretty kind. It’s borderline hysterical, the kind that erupts out of her throat, clogged with snot and tears. She shakes her head, mopping her eyes. 

“How did you—” 

“I felt it,” he says. He lays one large, steady hand across her belly. “Rey, why didn’t you call?” His voice drops to a whisper, paper-thin. “Why didn’t you tell me?” 

“I . . .” 

She’s at loss for words. Her eyes find the floor. Ben makes a noise in the back of his throat. 

“Come here, cyar'ika,” he murmurs, enfolding her in his arms again. She presses her face into his shirt,  _ inhaling  _ his scent by the lungfull. 

“I just . . . I didn’t want it to be real.” She frames his face with her hands, tracing a trembling line down the slope of his nose. “I don’t want to do this without you.” She squeezes his hand hard enough to hurt. “I can’t do this alone.” 

He presses a kiss to her forehead, so tender and soft it makes her body hurt. 

“You won’t have to.” 

With that, he’s gone. Rey hugs her arms to her chest as the Force subsides. watching the sun disappear behind the mountains. Twilight falls over Ashas Ree, and with it, the swell of insect song grows louder and the parvinoths begin to amass outside the open windows. 

The house is suddenly too big, too empty, without him there.

He’s coming. Three hours. She can make it in three hours. She draws a deep breath, rolling out the kinks in her neck and squaring her shoulders. She can do this. She just needs to distract herself until then. 

The sound of an engine's roar dominates the sleepy twilight. Rey’s breath catches in her throat. She pulls open the back door, squinting at the sky as a small, sleek shuttle touches down where the hillside levels out. She swallows her disappointment, watching the ship power down. She’d been expecting the  _ Falcon _ , thinking maybe Ben had pulled some miracle feat, but the shuttle is unfamiliar, not the old, YT class light freighter she’d recognize a mile away. The boarding ramp deploys with a hiss of hydraulics, and Rose Tico steps onto the grass. 

“Hey!” she yells, waving her hands. “I thought you might need some emotional support!” 

Rey chokes out a watery laugh, nearly moved to tears again.  _ Godsdammnit, what’s wrong with me?  _

She starts down the grassy hillside, and Rose meets her halfway, throwing her arms around Rey. Rey hugs her back, happy sobs burbling in her throat. 

“Rose? What’re you doing here? How did you—” 

“Your dark prince commed me while I was en route to Jagomir,” Rose explains. Rey cocks an eyebrow. Rose grins. “Sorry, wizard, that’s strictly classified information.” 

“Ah,” Rey says, nodding sagely. _Oh. Right._ She's no longer with the Resistance. 

“What a coincidence, huh?” Rose says, with a grin. “This is way out of range of my usual stomping grounds.”

Rey smiles. “You’re a godsend, Rose.” 

“I know,” Rose says, primly, though a blush deepens high in her cheeks. She jerks her chin, as if remembering why she came. Her eyes flick to Rey’s belly before resting on her face. She grasps Rey’s hand. 

“Are you . . . are you okay? Are you in pain?” 

“It doesn’t exactly feel nice,” she says, with a grimace. “But I’m managing.”

“Good. Okay, okay . . .” Rose says, taking a breath. “Let’s get you inside, okay? Then we can figure out what to do next.” Her voice trembles, and a pallor clings to her skin. Rey puts a hand on her shoulder. 

“I’m fine, Rose. Really.” 

“Sorry. I’m just . . .” she trails off. “I’ve never done this before. But I’m gonna be here, whatever you need. Alright? We’ll get through this.” 

Rey smiles. 

“You’re perfect, Rose. I just really need some company. A distraction, you know? To keep my mind off things.” 

“A distraction,” Rose repeats, a fierceness coming over her face. Determination flashes in her eyes. “Yeah. A distraction.  _ That _ , I can do.” She puts an arm around Rey’s shoulders. Rey covers her hand with her own, suddenly feeling childish and very, very small. 

_ “Don’t leave me.”  _

Rose gives her a strange look. 

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” 

“Thank you,” Rey gushes. Rose smiles, resolve sealing over her features, and a bit of protectiveness flares, unbidden and so strong Rey can sense it broiling, heady and hot 

“It’s what I’m here for, remember? I’m Emotional Support.” 

Rey nods. Rose gives her shoulders a squeeze. 

“Ready?” 

Rey takes a shuddery breath, drawing herself up to her full height, determination burning in her hazel eyes. 

“Ready.” 

Rose grins. “Let’s go have a baby.” 

* * *

Alarms blare in Ben’s ears as he rushes down the corridor, and the floor, dusty and dirtied from years of wear, pitches and rolls under his feet. It’s the hyperdrive’s motivator, no surprises there. The damned thing is more capricious than a hormonal zillo beast, and  _ that’s  _ saying something. _ Of course  _ this would happen now, as he’s racing against time to witness the birth of his son.

A string of increasingly blue profanity falls from lips as he crouches to identify the issue, whacking his head on the low ceiling in the process, worsening what once was the dull beginnings of a tension headache, until it’s a battering ram against his skull. The shriek of the alarms in his ears don’t help, and before he can think to curb the impulse, he swipes an arm out, fingers curling into a fist. He rents the main power module for the emergency alarm system out of the wall and flings it across the corridor, where the hunk of torn metal lands with a crack against the grimy tiles. 

_ There,  _ he thinks smugly.  _ That’s better.  _

His hands work feverishly, and all the while cursing the universe, curing this hunk of junk and every deity whose shit list he apparently tops at number one. He rakes his fingernails through his already hopelessly messy hair. 

He prods at the intricate inner mechanisms, eyes glazing over with panic as he stares jumble of wires spilling out of the motivator like the intestines of some strange beast, wishing he’d paid more attention to his father.

He makes do, of course. He has to. But he isn’t Rey. Rey, his radiant beam of light, who’s more at home among wires and scrap metal than should be humanly allowed. All his organs seem to shrivel up inside him at the thought of her. Alone. In pain. And he’s not there. 

He slams his fist into the motivator, and draws his hand back just as quickly, cursing as he feels a mild electric current jolt through his hand. 

He grits his teeth, grasping hold of those tendrils of pain, already fading fast, letting it sharpen his senses and dull his panic. Pain is instructive, Snoke used to say. He can hear that wretched purring in his ears, even now.  _ Pain makes you stronger. Use it. Master it. Let it drive you.  _

He resists the urge to clamp his hands over his ears, the sensible, practical part of him recognizing that this is merely a memory. 

_ He can’t hurt you anymore. _ Rey’s voice comes back to him, driving away that pulsating darkness, enveloping him in light. A piece of an entirely separate memory, as he lay wrapped in her embrace in their bed, legs tangled together, resting his head on her chest, his ear pressed over the place where her heart beat, lulling him into a hazy stupor as he clung to her, tight enough that he could almost fool himself into believing he could keep her safe, that they could stay like that forever. The moment would end, of course, but he let himself live in it a little longer, vowing to inscribe that sacred slice of time in his memory. Vowing to return to it, to live in it, even, every time the darkness came knocking at his door. 

She’s stroked delicate fingers through his locks, littering impossibly soft kisses over his forehead, his brow, the tip of his nose, driving away the last, residual tremors of the nightmare he’d locked himself in before he’d woken with his name on her lips and her arms around him, feeling too small, too childish. He’s wept, and she’d sealed her mouth to his so he could taste the salt of her tears masking the hint of spearmint toothpaste. They’d cried together for a long time, until a deep and soft silence fell over their bedroom. She’d taken his face in her hands and kissed him, and there was a kind of a fire, an aggression and, dare he say it, protectiveness behind the kiss that was ill-suited to that splintered moment of vulnerability they had just shared. He’d met her spark with gasoline, moving in slow imitation of the thing they’d do later, if the universe was kind, chasing that spark, and when they finally broke apart, if for no other reason than to suck in lungfuls of air, she’d taken his face in her hands, and told him, with all the flinty light of dying stars and burning cities blazing in her eyes, that he wasn’t alone. 

_ He can’t hurt you anymore.  _

She’d pushed his hair back from his face, and he’d leaned into her calloused, scarred palm, fingertips trailing the knape of her neck to the expanse of bare skin between her shoulder blades. 

_ I won’t let him.  _

Ben blinks, feeling the tendrils of darkness loosen their grip on his heart, and in their place, a wave of calm. He returns his attention to the motivator, reaching inside himself and tapping into the tiny rivulets of Force energy in the air. He lets it guide his fingers. He keeps Rey’s face in his heart—the way she’d looked when the Force had connected them for the briefest of moments, the way she’d called him  _ cyare _ , the way it fell from her lips so easily, like breathing, how it still managed to make his heart shudder with all a terrifyingly overwhelming rush of adoration. _My beloved._ The way she’d looked at him, like he was the reason she was put on this earth, the way the pain and panic that had so twisted her features dissipated when they’d locked eyes. How her shoulders had lowered inches, how his name rushed out of her windpipe like a prayer and a promise all at once.Gods, that sound alone was capable of bringing him to his knees. 

Working feverishly, he pushes every unspoken promise to Rey across the bond. 

_ I’ll come back for you, sweetheart. _

* * *

Rey paces the kitchen, soles of her feet pressed against the cold tiles as she walks with her hands braced on her hips, red in the face and breathing hard through each contraction. Rose sits at the kitchen table amongst a half-hearted sabacc game long-forgotten, running a nervous fingernail back and forth over the grain of the wood. Outside, dark pools of darkness well in the corners, chased away only by slivers of moonlight slicing through canopy of trees surrounding the house. 

Rey watches, through the haze of pain, as the technician throws a disdainful glance at the cards scattered over the table. It had been an unsuccessful attempt to distract from the pain, but Rey is absolute bantha shit at cards and Rose couldn’t sit still long enough to get through a whole game, hardly paying attention to the cards in her hand, throwing frequent, worried glances in Rey’s direction. 

“Stop looking at me like that!” Rey scolds, placing a gentle hand over her erratically bouncing knee to still it. Her face softens apologetically. “Sorry, but it’s driving me crazy. I’m fine. Really.” 

“Sorry,” Rose says, sheepishly. She clears her throat. “How many minutes was that last one?” she asks, and it’s hard to miss the way her voice trembles a little. Rey grimaces.

“Five?”

Rose pales. 

“Maybe we should go up to the bedroom. I’ll get some towels and—” 

“No!” Rey snaps. “Ben’s coming. I need to wait for him. I need to—” Her words cut off jaggedly in a pained gasp, screwing her eyes shut against the contraction. Rose is at her side in an instant, a hand resting on her back. 

They’re getting longer, more intense. She utters a breathy little laugh that borders on hysteria. If she thought those first, inconsequential pains were bad, this is a thousand times worse. 

“Breathe,” Rose soothes, rubbing her back. She shakes her head, heaving a long sigh. 

“You’re a warrior, Rey. Truly.” 

Rey manages a crinkled smile as she breathes through it. Rose who hovers by her side, looking at her like she’s going to shatter into pieces at any moment. 

She straightens as the pain abates. She reaches up to redo the bun knotted atop her head, taming the flyaways dampened with sweat. She’s wondering now why she was so adamant to do this organically. Even just a little bit of painkiller to take the edge off would work wonders. 

She resumes her slow, lumbering laps around the kitchen. She grasps at strings of Force energy, but they slip through her fingers, impossible to hold. More and more she feels like she’s floundering, grasping for a lifeline as waves pull her under. She’d tried to meditate without success, and the strange calm that had broken over her earlier had long since gone, leaving a tight glob of panic in its place. 

“Wanna play another round of— _ oh! _ ” Her knees quiver as a second wave hits her, right on the heels of the last. Her fingernails scrape at the edge of the countertop as she tries to find something to cling to. Rose returns to her side in an instant, fingers gripping her arm. 

“Rey, I really think we should go upstairs. C’mon, I’ll help you.” 

Rey shakes her head. 

“No,” she gasps. “It’s not time yet. Ben is almost here, I just need to hold on.” 

“I think your time’s up, Rey,” Rose says gently. “You can’t control these things. I’m sorry. The baby’s coming.” 

“Not . . . yet . . .” she pants. 

“Rey . . .” 

Rey shakes her eyes, lips pressed in a tight line. 

“What’re you doing?” Rose snaps, a deep frown carved into her face.

_ “Holding my breath!”  _ Rey squeaks, lips purpling. __

“What? Why?” Her grip on Rey’s arm tightens. “Stop that!” 

Rey shrugs. 

“That’s not gonna help anything! Quit it, before you pass out.” 

A long, ragged exhale bursts from his lips. 

“Stupid . . .” Rose mutters, shaking her head. “Don’t pull any more of that shit. Listen to what your body is telling you.”

“I can’t have this baby without him!” Rey cries, face twisting into a snarl. _ “Where is he?” _

“He’s on his way, but even if he was planetside on kriffing Coruscant I wouldn’t give a damn. You know why? Because _ you can do this.  _ Don’t you want to meet your baby? Don’t you want him to be healthy and safe?” 

Rey gives her a small nod. 

“So do I, but that means we’re gonna have to start moving things along. We don’t have to go upstairs. If you’re more comfortable, we can go to the guest bedroom. But I need you to listen to me, alright? Do you think you can do that?” 

“Yes,” Rey says. “Yes, I can do that.” 

“Good.” 

Rose takes her hand, giving it a squeeze. 

“You’ve gotta trust me.” 

Rey smiles. 

“I trust you.” 

“Good. I’ll comm Ben. You make yourself comfortable.” 

Rey nods, slowly. She shuffles out of the kitchen. Rose watches her go, pulling her comm from her pocket. 

“Where are you?” she demands, once she hears the static crackle on the other end. 

“I’ll be there in an hour.” 

“She can’t wait that long.” 

Ben swears.

“Tell her I’m coming as fast as I can.” 

“I did.” 

“How far apart are the contractions?” 

“Three minutes.” 

“Fuck.” 

“My sentiments, exactly,” Rose snaps. “Godsdamnit, Ben Solo, if you don’t get your ass here in the next twenty minutes we’re gonna have a real problem, buddy. She’s refusing to have this baby without you, but she’s going to have to do it whether your sorry ass is here or not.  _ Understand?”  _

She all but yells it into the receiver, then shuts off her comm without another word. She prays to the universe and all its gods and monsters that Ben Solo has one more party trick up his sleeve. The man came back from the dead, who’s to say he couldn’t teleport, too?

She pinches the bridge of her nose, a growing sense of dread creeping into her veins.

It’s going to be a long night. 

With a moment’s hesitation, Rose rummages around in the cabinets and finds a fifth of whiskey, the strong stuff, and pours herself a shot. She downs it in one go, wincing at the way it burns, and wipes her mouth on the back of her hand. She goes into the living room to find Rey, but she isn’t there. 

“Rey?” 

The door to the basement is ajar. Rose pauses in the doorway. The light is on. Rose descends the staircase. 

“Rey?” she calls, again, hating the way her voice trembles. Basements give her the creeps. 

She finds Rey in the corner, perched on a workbench with a hunk of rusted metal in her lap, pilex driver in hand. 

Rose clears her throat, hands braced on her hips. 

“What’re you doing?” 

Rey squints at her as if she’d sprouted another head. She holds up the pilex driver. 

“Tinkering,” she says, casually. 

“Um, you sure that’s a good idea?” 

“I’m fine, Rose,” she snaps. “I’m distracting myself.” 

“I see,” Rose says, slowly, not even a little convinced. “Alright, well, that’s enough distractions. It’s time, Rey.” 

“Rose, I know you’re trying to help, but I’m fine. I know what my body is telling me. It isn’t time yet.” 

“Rey—” 

“Rose,” she retorts. “I’m fine.” 

Rose cocks an eyebrow, incredulous. Rey ignores her. She fiddles with a wire, tongue poking out from between her teeth in concentration. 

“Hand me that Harris wrench, will you?” 

* * *

Ben has never run so fast in his life. He’s across the lawn in seconds, wrenching open the front door and barging into the house. He finds Rose at the table, steadily nursing a bottle of whiskey. Her face contorts when she glimpses him in the doorway. 

_ “Where have you been?” _ she snarls. 

“Where is she?” he snarls back, ignoring her question. His hands are curled into fists and there’s bright spots swimming at the edges of his vision. He forces a deep breath through his nose, gritting his teeth.

Rose jumps to her feet, a glass of amber liquor clutched in her hand. For a minute, he thinks she might actually hurl it at him, but she raises it to her lips instead. He watches the rest of the liquid disappear. She sets it on the table with a loud crack and jabs a finger toward the door leading toward the basement. 

“That woman is driving me to drink!” she cries. “She’s absolutely bull-headed. She won’t come out of the basement. I should kick your pretty little a—” 

Before he can stick around for her to finish that sentence, he’s bolting down the basement steps, taking them two at a time— _anything_ to get away from that feral woman. He pauses on the bottom step, his eyes meeting Rey’s. She’d been expecting him. She’d sensed him the moment he’d landed. His eyes rove over her face, noting her furrowed brows, her hazel eyes so clouded with pain. Sweat drips from her forehead and beads on her upper lip. He steps into the room, moving slowly, so as not to frighten her. 

“Ben,” she breathes, clamping a hand over her mouth to stifle the choked sob bursting from her lips. He’s at her side in an instant, arms encircling her, pulling her to him. She makes to stand up, fingernails grinding into his arm as a breathy little gasp works its way up her throat. He pulls away, hands framing her face, tears shimmering in his eyes. 

“What is it? What’s wrong?” 

Her grip tightens on his arm, fingernails digging into the skin deep enough to draw blood. She peers up at him with eyes that seem very far away, but when she speaks, he can hear the smile in her voice. It’s a sliver of sunlight poking through clouds, chasing away every little insidious fear he holds in his heart. 

“It’s time.” 

* * *

By the time Ben carries her up the stairs and eases her onto the sofa, she is seized with a very violent urge to push. She hoists herself up so she’s semi-sitting up, hiking her dress up matter-of-factly. Ben kneels by her side, and she clutches his hand like it’s the lifeline she’d been searching so hard to find. Rose brings a pile of towels and blankets from the coat closet in the entryway. 

Ben gives her hand little squeezes two at a time. One-two. One-two. Imitating out the beat of her heart and the pulsating Force energy that surrounds them. He leans over, pressing his lips tightly against her forehead. 

“You’re so beautiful, Rey,” he murmurs. “You’re so brave, so strong . . .” He trails off, lips moving from her forehead to the corner of her lips. She bats at him, shrugging off his ministrations, because it’s time to push. She does it without really thinking, her body shifting into autopilot, every instinct is screaming at her to push. 

Blood rushes in her ears. She is vaguely aware of the animalistic grunts coming from her mouth, but she can’t really muster the energy to care. Ben is squeezing her hand hard enough to hurt, and there are tears streaming down his cheeks as he mutters encouragements under his breath. He’s with her, enveloping her Force signature in his warmth, and it feels like it did when they faced off Snoke’s guards, back to back, every breath and movement in sync. She lets the feeling consume her. It gives her the strength she needs to carry her through the second push, and a third, pausing in between to draw great lungfuls of air, sweat and tears intermingling on her cheeks. Rose is between her legs, white in the face, but her eyes are hard hunks of coal. 

“You’re almost there, Rey,” she urges.

Ben dabs at her forehead with a cool rag. Rey’s breath comes in quick gasps, face screwed up in pain. All her focus is consumed with the urge to push. Hard. Harder than before. She sits up so she’s squatting, and Ben folds himself behind her on the sofa, supporting her back while she pushes, a jumble of profanity tumbling from her lips. His lips brush her neck. 

“You’re almost there, baby,” Ben says, hoarsely. Tears are leaking from his eyes. “You’re so strong, cyar'ika.” 

“I love you, cyare, but if you don’t shut up, I’m going to kick you out of this room,” Rey snaps, through gritted teeth, and Ben just grins, looking a little more in love. 

“There she is.” 

Rey’s about to retort, but she doesn’t have the breath for it, because there’s another push and she barely has time to close her eyes before another scream rips through her, and she decides she is absolutely feral, because she shouldn’t be capable of making the noises, but she does, nearly  _ growling _ , fingers digging into the cushions. 

Rose’s eyes widen. 

“I see his head!” 

Ben squeezes her hand. 

“One more push, Rey,” he says, voice thick with tears. 

“Gods,” Rey gasps. “I can’t do it. I can’t . . .” 

“Look at me, cyar'ika,” he says, and maybe it’s the way he says it that immediately draws her eyes to him, once again feeling herself pulled into his orbit. She drowns in those dark eyes.

“Do you trust me?” he asks. 

Rey nods. 

“I trust you.” 

“Then trust me when I tell you that you can do this. I have never once doubted that. You’re the strongest person I know.” He presses another kiss to her forehead, and it all but bruises his lips in its urgency. 

“Be with me,” Rey whispers. 

“I’m with you.” 

She grips his hand and pushes with everything she is, and then there’s the strange and debilitating feeling of emptiness, of something ripped from her. She collapses on the pillows, and then Rose is placing a screaming, purplish little body on her bare chest. 

Rey weeps as she lifts her hands to cradle him, tears clouding her vision as her trembling fingers wipe at the fluid and membrane clogging his eyes and nose, pressing a wet kiss to the space between his eyes as he wails and wails. He’s so small, so fragile in her hands, and her fingertips dab at the vernix coating the tendrils of black hair slicked to his bulbous head with fluid. 

She hears Ben’s sharp intake of breath as he peers down at his son, wearing the biggest smile she has ever seen grace his features. A tear clings to the tip of his nose, and Rey kisses it away, and then his mouth is on her and they’re kissing, and she’s stifling hiccups as she clutches their son to her chest. He’s snuffling and wailing, and it’s only when Ben reaches over her shoulder to cradle his head that his eyes open, tiny little lashes unfurling. The baby gazes up at his father with a set of blue-green eyes she knows will shift to match his father’s brown ones, in time. 

He quiets, still snuffling, and Rey presses another kiss to his head. Rose hands her a blanket, and she wraps it securely around his tiny body to keep out the chill. She dabs at her eyes, exhaustion filling her veins. Exhaustion and something else. It dances on the tip of her tongue, and when she looks at Ben, the way his eyes are glued to his son’s face with a mixture of adoration and shell-shock, she knows what it is. Contentment. Simple and plain. Finally, she can rest. 

She mops her eyes, gazing down at their son, who snuffles and paws at her bare chest. Ben’s arms fall around her, and she leans her head against his chest. For several, long moments, the room is silent as they sit, completely and totally captured by this wrinkled, purple blob in Rey’s arms. 

“He’s beautiful,” Rose says, out of courtesy, even though newborn human children are ugly little turnips as far as she’s concerned. 

“Isn’t he?” Rey says, like she really believes it, gazing down at him with stars in the eyes. 

Ben presses another kiss to her head. 

“He is.” 

“What’s his name?” 

“Kiran,” Ben says. 

“Kiran,” Rose echoes. “I like it.” 

She leans down, smiling at the baby. “Hello, my little man,” she coos. 

Ben reaches over and lifts Kiran’s little hand, and it looks impossibly tiny against his large one. 

“All five little fingers,” he murmurs, and lifts the other hand. “And five more . . .” He grins. “That’s five more than your mother has.” 

Rey giggles. Ben leans his head against hers. Rey is worn out. Her eyelids are growing heavy. She strokes Kiran’s soft head, holding him to her chest. Ben tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear, still murmuring sweet nothings, repeating the motion. The movement of his fingers soothes her, and she allows her eyelids to flutter closed, lets herself sink into the brief reprieve. Just before she drifts off, she feels Kiran latch and begin to nurse.


	39. The Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter!!!!

The first nights are the hardest. There’s a lot of crying in the middle of the night, and frustration when Rey can’t get the baby to latch, when Ben can’t figure out how to get a diaper on. Rey is so exhausted she falls asleep sitting up. Her body aches from the birth, from the way it stretched and tore her, and when she looks in the mirror it fills her with remorse to see the way her body has changed, the stretch marks and the loose skin and the extra padding of fat. 

All of it pales in comparison to her newborn son’s big, inquisitive eyes, or his tiny, toothless mouth open in a yawn, or his first smile, or each precious finger and toe. She learns to love each and every one of the changes to her body. Ben’s fingertips trace each mark and scar like it’s hallowed ground. He makes them art. He makes them beautiful. 

All of it seems inconsequential at the end of the day, when they are granted a precious moment of aloneness. They fall into bed and hold each other, and Ben plants soft kisses to the dark circles under Rey’s eyes and she threads her hands through his untameable locks. They can barely keep their eyes open, and they know they may have only a moment before the baby’s wails interrupt them, but in those moments there is always an unquestionable sense of safety, of rightness, wrapped in each others arms. Then the baby cries, and Rey makes to get up, but Ben’s protective arm across her chest stops her. 

“I’ll get it,” he whispers, kissing the corner of her mouth, and Rey recedes back into the thin film of slumber she’s been floating in, listening to his footsteps in the gray light of her bedroom, listening to him greet Kiran. The baby’s gurgling cries immediately cease at the familiar sound of his father’s voice. Rey scoots over to Ben’s side, where it’s still warm with the memory of his body, and snuggles under the heap of blankets that envelop her in his scent. There, in the dark, she thanks the stars that her son will grow up with his father there to comfort him when he finds himself lost in the dark.

Rey is drifting back to sleep when the bed frame creaks and Ben eases himself into the bed. He’s holding the baby, who’s fast asleep, and Rey opens her arms, humming in soft contentment as she feels the velvet curve of his little cheek nestle in the hollow between her breasts. She strokes her fingertips over the black down on his head and Ben’s arms encircle them both. He kisses the top of Kiran’s head, and then plants another kiss to her brow, and then she’s drifting, again. 

Finn and Poe visit often, sometimes accompanied by Rose or Chewie. They sip wine on the back porch and discuss anything and everything from politics to old war stories. While Finn and Ben work out a strange kind of friendship, Poe and Ben merely tolerate each other. Ben treats Rose with an odd mixture of respect and fear. And Chewie, well, there’s a lot of scar tissue there, but one night she catches them sitting by the fire in the living room, heads bowed in solemn discussion. She leaves to give them their privacy, but not before she sees Chewie drape a consoling arm around Ben’s shoulders. 

Finn and Poe announce their engagement, and Rey pulls them both into a rib-crushing hug that leaves them gasping for breath and grinning from ear to ear. Rose pokes fun at Rey and Ben, asking where her wedding invitation is. Ben is red in the face and Rey just laughs. They’ve got a baby and a life together, but there’s no ring to speak of. Ben says they’re waiting for the right time, Rey doesn’t understand why a ring would change anything. He is hers and she is his and that is all that matters.

Tem, Oniho and Arashell adore Kiran. They sit room floor to play with him while Rey and Ben escape to get other chores done, first when he’s merely a blob that cries and shits, and later, when he can roll over, when he can keep his head up, when he begins to crawl, when he can hold things in his fat little hands and shake them and bang them against the furniture. He’s got no shortage of people and things to play with, but he prefers boxes and containers he can stack. He loves opening the cabinets he can reach and dumping all their contents onto the floor: cereal boxes, cups, spoons, shoes, anything. Everything is his favorite thing and everything is magic. He likes to yank on Rey’s hair, screams with delight when Ben lifts him high in the air and makes starship noises as they zoom around the house. He spreads his arms wide and kicks his little toddler legs. 

It’s Chewie who coaxes Kiran into taking his first, wobbly steps. He lets go of the coffee table, which he’d been using as a crutch, and bounds with his little hands waving, a goofy smile on his face, towards Chewie’s outstretched arms, taking not one, not two, but three tottering steps toward the wookiee before collapsing against his hairy chest with a giggle. 

He plays outside in the mud and twigs, building all sorts of concoctions. He collects insects, shells, and pretty stones, shoving them in Rey’s hands to hold. By the time they return to the house, her pockets are laden with the forest’s little treasures—what may be ordinary to most people are small wonders to him. In that regard, he is his mother’s son. He may be a scavenger and an avid admirer of pretty stones and earthly treasures, but it’s clear which parent he takes after.

Ben is his idol, his hero, his whole world. Kiran trots to match his father’s long-legged stride. When he has a bad dream, he wakes Ben. When he wants to be tucked in, he calls Ben. They have no shortage of rituals, codes, secret handshakes, and inside jokes. 

He adopts a tree-frog, which he names “Zugi,” but Zugi’s life is sadly cut short when Rey accidentally steps on him. She doesn’t think he’ll ever forgive her. Ben helps him dig a little grave in the backyard, and the whole family, Uncle Poe and Uncle Finn included, pay their respects to their dear, departed friend. 

He speaks his first word, “Finn,” at eleven months, as if Finn’s ego needed any more inflating. At the age of two, he’s drawing on the walls. By the age of three, he can nearly keep up with Tem and the others on his chubby little toddler legs. By the age of four, his Force-sensitivity begins to manifest. It happens when he trips and falls on the stairs. Rey opens her mouth in a horrified scream and rushes to catch him, only to find levitating a few inches off the ground. He blinks at her, thoroughly surprised at the situation he finds himself in, and promptly bursts into tears. He lands with a soft thud on his rear. Rey scoops him up and holds him until his sobs quiet to soft little hiccups. She explains what happened, what the Force is, why he has the powers he does. To show him, she levitates all the oranges they keep in the fruit basket on the kitchen counter so they spin around and around his head. He laughs and tries to catch them. 

After that, the lessons begin. 

Kiran falls ill with a nastly flu. Rey is up all night with him, and just when she’s close to snapping, teary-eyed and exhausted and covered in vomit, holding her child as he trembles with feverish chills, Ben appears. He helps her clean up and tucks Kiran into their bed, leaving her to brush her teeth and change into pajamas, and when she returns, Kiran is asleep.

“I think his fever broke,” Ben tells her, as she slides between the sheets. He pulls her close, pressing a kiss to her brow, their child sandwiched between them. Rey looks at him, a pain in her chest too great to bear, all the love she feels for him threatening to burst out of her, and before she can think to do otherwise, she grabs his hand, dumb from lack of sleep and worried for Kiran and fighting the beginnings of a fever, herself.

“Will you marry me?” she blurts out. Ben looks at her like he’s not sure he heard her right, so she repeats the question, and before she can finish, he’s taking her face in his hands and sealing their lips. When he pulls away, she just looks at him dumbly. 

“You haven’t answered my question.” 

_“Yes,”_ he says, a bit exasperatedly. He starts laughing, and Rey laughs, too, and before long they’re both hysterical, sides heaving as they catch their breath. He pulls her to him, showering her with kisses punctuated by laughter, and he’s saying, “yes, of course. Gods, Rey. I was going to ask you, but I wasn’t sure that’s what you wanted, and I—” 

She kisses him to shut him up, and her lips are feverish and hot against his, and a spike of worry rises in him that’s almost palpable over the bond. She brushes off his concern, and when they break apart, breathless, they collapse on the pillows, fingers laced, heads spinning with the elation of their engagement and the absurdity of Rey’s proposal and the circumstances which prompted it. She hadn’t planned it, it just felt right, looking at him through the cloud of tears and baby vomit and tiredness. She couldn’t imagine a life without him there to hold a cold compress to her forehead and wipe the vomit from her blouse, and though they shared a home and a child and four years together, she wanted to wear a white dress and pledge her loyalty and love to him in front of an audience. 

They travel to Naboo for the wedding. It’s a small affair, held at Varykino, Padmé Amidala’s lakeside retreat. Technically, it’s theirs now. As her only living heir, Ben had inherited it. The ceremony is beautiful in its simplicity. Kiran holds Rey’s hand as she walks down the aisle in a white gown, with daisies threaded into her intricate plaits. Ben has the same look in his eyes like one who’d tipped too far back in their chair when he first glimpses her, moving like moonlight in that dress. He looks like he’s going to pass out, and Rey would be a liar if she said she didn’t feel the same, but the sight of him steadies the ground beneath her feet. She takes his hand and he holds fast. Steadied, they say their vows. They pledge their love to each other, promising to weather the storm together, come what may. 

Rose toasts them, and Finn’s eyes look treacherously wet. Poe shakes Ben’s hand, and Chewie embraces them. The band strikes up a tune, and Rey’s grabbing Ben’s arm, and before he can protest, she’s whisking him to the dance floor. He looks out of place and awkward, but Rey loops an arm around his neck, the other falling to his side, and she guides him through the steps. She’s a poor dancer herself, but she doesn’t care. She deserves to dance with her husband on her wedding night, so they dance, and by the end of it, they’re both pink-faced and laughing. 

The dancing is endless, and so is the food. The impossibly long buffet tables contain more food than Rey is capable of consuming, though she tries her best. She’s on the verge of bursting out of her dress by the time she and Ben are whisked to their suite

He carries her to the bed, and their lips find each other. Clothes are torn away, skin touches skin, and promises are exchanged. He fills her up, and there’s less talking, after that. They crash into that delicious crescendo together, and afterwards, as they lay in bed, Ben’s head resting on Rey’s chest as she brushes his hair back from his forehead and he traces patterns across her bare abdomen, they exchange another, private vow that somehow feels weightier than the ones before. 

“I love you,” he says, with a harsh urgency in his voice. It breaks on the last syllable, and there are tears in his eyes. Rey smiles, pressing kisses to the tip of his nose, his jaw, the corner of lips. 

“I love you, too.”

One day, at breakfast, Kiran struts into the kitchen wearing nothing but socks and a red cape that was part of a costume Poe had given him for his third birthday. He takes his seat with an air of nonchalance that sends Rey into a fit of laughter she tries hard to suppress. Instead, she shoves a spoonful of cereal into her mouth and nearly chokes. 

“Baby, you’ve gotta put some clothes on,” she says, still coughing. She looks at him through watering eyes and pinches his cheek, affectionately. “No naked buns at the dinner table. That’s a rule.” 

Kiran opens his mouth to protest, but Ben shoots him a look. 

“C’mon, little man,” he says, scooping him up by the armpits and hauling him back to his room. “Listen to your mother.” 

Through the door, left ajar, she listens to the hails of hysterical laughter as Ben falls into one of his many personas, imitating the high, nasally voice of a character from one of Kiran’s cartoons. Ben Solo didn’t play pretend, unless, of course, Kiran wanted him to, because the man was absolutely whipped when it came to his son, and they both knew it. 

Rey sets down her datapad, strongly suspecting her heart might burst for all the simple joy she feels in that moment. It’s Saturday, and she’s enjoying the simple pleasure of having nowhere to be but an afternoon picnic by the lake with her family. The only pressing matter on her mind is the little plastic stick she’d hidden in her sock drawer, the one that told her she was pregnant with their second child. The initial panic she’d felt when she’d learned of her first pregnancy is absent this time around. In its place, an overwhelming rightness. She’ll tell him later, over dinner and a glass of wine she’d leave untouched, and he’d smile, and they’d be alright. They had each other. 

Ben returns to the table with Kiran in tow, looking entirely too pleased with himself considering Kiran’s shirt is backwards and inside-out, his wild shock of black hair sticking up in several places. Kiran spills an entire carton of milk when he insists on pouring it by himself, but Rey can’t bring herself to pretend to be even a little bit mad. Nothing can dampen her spirits, today. 

Ben jumps up to grab some paper towels. Kiran picks up his bowl to bring it to the stink. It sloshes precariously as he scrambles down from his chair, and Ben stops him before he spills it down his front. 

“No more spills, today,” Ben says, taking the bowl. He clears the rest of the dining ware and ushers Kiran to his room to play while Rey helps herself to another piece of toast. When Ben returns, offering to pack some sandwiches for the picnic, he barely finishes his sentence before she jumps from her chair, closing the space between them, and presses a fierce kiss to his lips. He kisses her back, hands knotting in her hair, and when they break apart he looks incredulous but pleased. 

“Someone woke up the right side of the bed this morning,” he remarks, and she just grins. 

When she tells him she’s expecting, a broad grin breaks over his face. He sweeps her off her feet and parades her around the room, and there’s that familiar, flinty protectiveness glinting in his eyes. He lays her down on the sofa and kisses her, and it’s heady and urgent, and her head is spinning by the time he pulls away to study her face. He tastes like wine. 

His fingers pluck at her shirt buttons, but she places a hand on his chest, stopping him

“Kiran’s asleep,” he reminds her, and that’s all it takes, before she’s fumbling with his belt and he’s got a hand up her shirt. She pushes him onto the couch and clambers into his lap. He pinches her ass, and she laughs, a little too loudly. She can’t help it. Her eyes widen, realizing her mistake, and claps a hand over her mouth, eyes flicking nervously to Kiran’s bedroom door. For several, long seconds, they wait, and then the light flicks on, and Kiran appears in the doorway with his stuffie clutched in his hand. He rubs his eyes. 

“Mommy?” he asks, voice roughened with sleep, and Rey rolls off him and gets to her feet. She ignores Ben’s pleading groan as she climbs the stairs to put Kiran back to bed. 

Little Hanna Solo is born in the middle of a winter storm. She, too, has Ben’s shock of black hair, but her hazel eyes are Rey’s and so are her freckles. She is fiery and whip-smart, and the bane of Kiran’s existence. Temiri is her favorite person in the whole world. The feeling is mutual. At the time of her birth, Tem is almost fifteen. It doesn’t take long for her to wrap him around her little pinky finger. 

Hanna’s Force-sensitivity takes longer to manifest, so long that Rey begins to suspect that maybe she isn’t Force-sensitive at all, but Ben insists she’s just slower to catch up. Sure enough, mere days before Hanna’s ninth birthday, she proves Rey wrong. One day, she’ll be a force to be reckoned with. 

Ben finds Rey out in the garden, tending to her plants. She’s got quite the collection, now. They grow up from the ground or in pots or even from rested scrap metal parts she’d reused to function as planters. The garden is her favorite place, and she comes here for a bit of quiet. With a house packed with droids, moody teenagers (including Poe and Finn’s adopted, thirteen year old daughter, Lana), a wily ten-year old, and violently obese loth cat, quiet is hard to come by. But she wouldn’t have it any other way. The house is never empty, and she is never lonely. Wind chimes sing bright melodies and birds whistle their morning tunes, and Rey stoops among a grove of snapping flowers with a pair of pruning shears. Her bones are stiffer than they once were, and there’s a bit of gray in her long, chestnut hair. She likes these changes. They match in the salt and pepper stubble lining Ben’s jaw, the smile-lines etched around his mouth. 

She hears footsteps behind her and feels a grin inching, unbidden, across her face. She knows it's him. Even if they didn’t share a bond in the Force, she’d know the sound of his gait anywhere, would know the smell of him, the rustle of his gray robes as he picked his way down the gravelly, garden path. 

His arms fall around her as he pulls into an embrace from behind, resting his chin on his shoulder. 

“You stink,” she grunts, still clipping at the dead flower heads. 

“I’ve been sparring with Tem all morning and, well, it’s rather hot outside,” he explains. “I thought I’d stop by and see my lovely wife before I shower. Would you like to join me?” He spins her around so she’s facing him, pinning her against the broad wall of his chest. He’s grinning, now. That stupid, insufferable half-smile that’s capable of turning her knees to jelly, nearly sixteen years later.

“What’s in it for me?” 

“I’ll show you.” 

He leans forward, pressing a kiss to her lips. It’s just a quick peck, but it leaves the lingering promise of more, and something stirs in her belly in response to it. 

She hums, contented. 

“Maybe you can show me that thing you do with your—”

He nudges her shoulder, jerking his head towards a tree in the corner of the garden. 

“There are little ears lurking,” he warns. 

On cue, Hanna leaps from the tree. She lands on the ground, catlike, and folds her arms, looking disgruntled. 

“Ugh, why do you guys have to be so gross?” she pouts, sticking her tongue out. 

“Just wait ‘till you’re older and you fall in love. You won’t think it’s gross then, will you?” Rey asks, folding her arms. Ben puts a hand on her shoulder. 

“I won’t _ever_ fall in love!” she says, and with that, she saunters off. Rey makes a face. 

“She’s barely eleven and she’s already acting like a teenager,” Rey says, despairingly. “Kiran had his rebellious streak, sure, but not _this_ early.” 

“She’s stubborn,” Ben concedes. He smiles. “Like her mother.” 

“Careful, Solo. I can still kick your ass.” 

“I know,” he says, adoringly, playing with the ends of her hair. He catches her shoulders, framing her face in his palms. “Where were we? Oh, yes, you were saying . . .” 

“Stuff it, laser brain,” Rey says, with a laugh. She sets her pruning shears down on the stone bench and seizes his hand, leading him up the garden path towards the house. She and Ben pause under the shade of a tree, looking out over the grounds. She sees Tem and the other students practicing their forms, sees the purple of his saber against the sun’s white light. Kiran is standing on the balcony with Abosha, a togruta apprentice he fancied. The two hold hands, heads bowed in quiet conversation, stuck in their own little world. Rey smiles, thinking of the stupid, young love budding between them, the heartbreak and happiness they’ll bring upon each other. 

She’s struck by the overwhelming feeling of fullness. No longer are there so many empty spaces in her heart. They’ve been filled up by her children, by her friends and students, and by her husband. He has excised those scarred pieces of her. They have their moments, of course. Sometimes their sparring matches are a little more heated than usual. They argue, they disagree. But they make it a point to never go to bed angry. 

Ben still wakes from nightmares with shadows in his eyes and darkness in his heart, but it’s always quick to fade once her arms encircle him. Sometimes Rey winds up on her hands and knees on the ground, waiting for flashbacks of the war to go away, and he’s always there to comfort her, to help her talk through it. To help her heal. 

Rey reaches over, taking his hand. He looks at her and smiles, and she drinks it in. What once was a rare and wonderful now blesses her presence every day. That doesn’t make it any less beautiful, of course. When Ben Solo smiles, he lights up like the sun. 

He gives her hand a gentle squeeze, tracing patterns over her knuckles. She leans her head on his shoulder, gazing over all of Ashas Ree’s green. Ben presses his lips to her crown, leaning his head against hers. 

Their scars are too deep to ever really go away, but everyday it gets a little easier. They have each other, and their children. 

And that’s enough for both of them. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That’s all, folks. Thank you for all your kudos and kind reviews. I can finally say I’m ready to put this story out of its misery. For those of you who’ve been waiting so patiently for the HEA, I hope I have done it justice. It is my only wish that I’ve given you a bit of closure where it concerns our beloved space idiots. 
> 
> I would love to hear your closing thoughts, so drop a comment and let me know what you think! 
> 
> I’m aeawrites on tumblr. Though my tumblr has been hopelessly neglected, I will be updating with a playlist of songs that inspired this fic, and though I can’t promise anything, I do not entirely detest the idea of a small sequel fic focused around Kiran and Hanna. If I do decide to indulge, I will be posting updates on my tumblr, but for now, I’m going to rest my fingers (and my emotions). 
> 
> Thank you again for your feedback and support, y’all are awesome! 


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